Google has announced a program called the "Summer of Code." Students interested in hacking on free software can put in an application and, working with a mentor project, earn $4500 for completing a project. The participating projects include Python, Perl, Apache, Ubuntu, Mono, GNOME, Wine, Subversion, and Google itself.
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Google's summer of code
Posted Jun 1, 2005 19:59 UTC (Wed) by frazier (subscriber, #3060)
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"Summer of Code" supporting single company-based projects is interesting. Ubuntu/Canonical and Google itself are listed, though I suppose Mono is largely Novell as well (they send out press releases for it, anyway: http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2004/06/pr04045.... )
In practical terms, as long as everything is released back under a open license (GPL, LGPL, etc) it'll still be available regardless of who is backing a given project. Diversification of sponsorship (adding Google) is a good thing, as is getting people in college incentive to become more involved with free software projects.