Google Summer of Code 2007 is on, and are now accepting student applications for the program. What exactly is GSoC? Chris DiBona explains:

Last year we paid 630 students from 450 schools in 90 countries $4,500 each to work on open source software projects. These projects, selected by some 100 open source mentoring organizations from over 6,000 applications, provided students with invaluable real-world programming experience.

If you’re a college student who’d like to program over the summer for the good of open source, we’re taking applications until March 24.

So not only does one get to work with some awesome Open Source organizations, and get actual real world programming experience, but Google also pays for it! Not as much as one would get for a full-time software development position, but it sure beats the part-time summer work alternatives. This is an amazing opportunity to jump-start your programming career with experience, especially if your University lacks a solid co-op program. Though even then this offers a chance to work along side the organizations who wouldn’t normally hire students. Some groups I’d love to work with over a summer would be:

• Adium – the most amazing Instant Messenger client. Ever.
• Haskell.org – it’s very functional.
• Inkscape – vector art is the only type of drawing I don’t completely suck at.
• Mozilla Foundation – because Firefox makes my life easy. Thunderbird is good too.
• Ruby Central, Inc. – it has to do with Ruby, enough said.
• WordPress – just look around this blog. I’m already writing plugins.

And there are 130 other groups participating. So if you are a student and don’t have any better plans for the summer, send in your application by March 24th, 2007.

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