Google is handing out $4,500 stipends to a select group of college students who will spend this summer contributing to open-source projects, including ones that compete with Google’s own software.
It’s part of the company’s “Summer of Code,” now in its fifth year. Among the 150 open-source projects that Google has included in the program is NetSurf, a Web browser led by a team in England, which is, at least theoretically, competing with Google’s own browser, Chrome.
“We’re really not so worried about competition,” said Leslie Hawthorn, program manager for open source at Google, in an interview. “Competition is par for the course and healthy in open source.”
Google is offering fewer stipends this year than last year — 1,000 this year compared with 1,175 last year. But Ms. Hawthorn said that the company is committing the same amount of money to the project as last year — $5-million — and focusing more energy on mentoring and support for the participating students.
The company developed a new open-source scheduling system, called Melange, to help the students manage their open-source work, and Google is making that software available to others who want to sponsor similar projects to support open-source development. —Jeffrey R. Young
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