Janet Haven: Dear Google: A suggestion for Summer of Code 2006

Yesterday, I wrote about Google's Summer of Code 2005 as a darn fine way to connect young developers with open source projects and communities. And I still think so, although I have a suggestion for Google for Summer of Code 2006 (assuming they are, in fact, planning to run it again). To refresh, last year's Summer of Code matched up young developers with open source projects that had volunteered to mentor an intern. Young developers applied to the project they were interested in from the list of available mentors, were selected, and then rewarded with a summer of work on the project they chose and 5000 USD from Google for their time (500 of which went to the mentoring organization). Google had committed to funding up to 400 developers, which works out to a heck of a lot of money (2 million USD).

Not suprisingly, the Summer of Code site has a nifty little Google Map geolocating both the mentor projects and the participating students (see the world view above). Notice anything strange? Could it really be that there aren't any up-and-coming young open source developers in sub-saharan Africa, the Middle East/North Africa or Central Asia who would want to participate?

How odd.

(Actually, it appears from the map that two mentoring members of LispNYC, and one Google mentor are based in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Right. Strangely, they didn't manage to rustle up any locals in either country for the project.)

Yes, I'm being snarky, but only because I know excellent open source developers in these regions, and it pains me to think that with a few well-placed emails to relevant listservs and some encouragement to truly internationalize from Google to the mentoring organizations, the map above might have looked different. 2 milion dollars is a lot of money to spend on encouraging open source developers, and it's a lot more money in the regions I mention than it is in Europe or the US. 4500 USD to a computer science student in Accra or Almaty could be a year's support -- or several years' school fees. Or it could allow the involvement of a number of students for a summer, instead of just one.

So my modest suggestion to Google is this: if you go ahead with Summer of Code 2006, reach out to the developer communities in less-developed regions, and encourage your mentoring organizations to view the world as flat. Building skills, confidence, and international ties between developer communities across the globe is a fabulous way to do no evil.

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