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PDT/StudentsProgram2009FAQ
Eclipse PHP Development Tools (PDT) Students Program Frequently Asked Questions
About
What is Eclipse PDT Students Program?
Eclipse PHP Development Tools (PDT) Student Program is a global program that offers student developers stipends to contribute code for the Eclipse PDT project. Through this program, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the Eclipse community, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios in areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, the Eclipse PDT project can more easily identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.
What are the goals of this program?
- Get more open source code created and released for the benefit of all
- Inspire young developers to begin participating in open source development
Help open source projects identify and bring in new developers and committers Provide students the opportunity to do work related to their academic pursuits during the summer (think "flip bits, not burgers") Give students more exposure to real-world software development scenarios (e.g., distributed development, software licensing questions, mailing-list etiquette) Is Google Summer of Code a recruiting program?
Not really. To be clear, Google will use the results of the program to help identify potential recruits, but that's not the focus of the program. Take a look at the organizations we've worked with in the past, and you'll see the vast majority are engaged in work that's not directly applicable to Google's business. That said, the more code out there, the more everyone benefits.
Additionally, we've heard from several of our past student participants that their participation in GSoC made them more attractive to potential employers, and most participants who have gained employment as a result of their GSoC work are not currently employed by Google. We're just pleased the program has helped some students when embarking on their technical careers. We're also pleased that the industry sees participation in the program as an additional factor to recommend a future employee.
How many mentoring organizations does Google expect to take part in the program? We worked with 40 organizations in 2005, over 100 in 2006, over 130 in 2007 and 175 in 2008. We expect slightly fewer organizations to take part in 2009, as we've capped the number of student participants at 1,000.
How many students does Google expect to take part in the program We funded approximately 400 student projects in 2005, 600 in 2006, 900 in 2007 and 1125 in 2008. We'll be funding approximately 1,000 student projects in 2009. For more information, see our Notes on Student Allocations.
When can I apply for Google Summer of Code? We'll begin accepting applications from open source mentoring organizations on Monday, March 9, 2009; we'll stop accepting organization applications on Friday, March 13th.
The student application period begins Monday, March 23, 2009 and ends Friday, April 3rd.
For full details, see the program timeline.
How does the program work? Here are the steps:
Open source projects who'd like to participate in Google Summer of Code in 2009 should choose an organization administrator(s) to represent them Organization administrators will submit the project's application for participation online Google will notify the organization administrators of acceptance, and an account for the organization will be created on the Google Summer of Code 2009 site Students submit project proposals online to work with particular mentoring organizations Mentoring organizations rank student proposals and perform any other due diligence on their potential mentees; student proposals are matched with a mentor Google allocates a particular number of student slots to each organization Students are notified of acceptance Students begin learning more about their mentoring organization and its community before coding work starts Students begin coding work at the official start of the program, provided they've interacted well with their community up until the program start date Mentors and students provide mid-term progress evaluations Mentors provide a final evaluation of student progress at close of program; students submit a final review of their mentor and the program Student uploads completed code to Google Code hosted project How do evaluations work?
Google will pre-publish the evaluation questions for both students and mentors. Mentors will fill out mid-term and final evaluations for their students via the Google Summer of Code 2009 site. These evaluations will be visible in the system to the mentor and the mentoring organization's administrator(s). Students will fill out a mid-term and final evaluation of their mentors online as well, and their evaluations will only be visible in the system to the mentoring organization's administrator(s). Program administrators from Google will have access to all evaluation data.
In almost all cases, students will never see their mentor's evaluation of their progress, nor will a mentor see a student's evaluation of her/his mentorship. However, in the case where the mentoring organization's administrator and a student's mentor are one and the same, the student's evaluation will be shared with the mentor. Organization administrators are expected to review mid-term and final evaluations and to provide course corrections where necessary.
In some cases, Google's program administrators may need to share the results of evaluations with the student and mentor, such as to arbitrate when payment should not be made; should this need arise, all parties will be notified in advance.