Free Software Linux

Linux.com: "The key to being successful in the IT industry is interning while still attending college and taking some certification courses after graduation. Do some research. Find an open source technology company that will provide you with the tools and resources you will need to build your career. Open source spans platforms, middleware and applications from data centers to desktops. There are many companies that offer internship programs and certification courses." Complete Story Advertisement: read more

After 18 months of development, Geeklog 1.5.0 has been released.  As I mentioned last month, changes found in Geeklog 1.5.0 incorporates the following projects implemented during the 2007 Google Summer of Code:

• New user-friendly install script
• New Configuration Graphical User Interface
• New Webservices API based on the Atom Publishing Protocol

Additional new features and enhancements included in this release:

Still not sure why usability testing is important? See what a linux hobbyist found in an informal usability test on Ubuntu. Usability testing (hereafter "UT") is getting a lot of attention in Drupal -- and rightly so IMHO. If we aim to have "100%" test coverage on Drupal's code and functionality for Drupal 7, it stands to reason we also need test "coverage" on Drupal's usability. If not, it's far too easy for bad interfaces to be developed that pass all the functional and unit tests, but fail miserably in the real world!

Google Code: "Google Summer of Code 2008 is on! Over the past three
years, the program has brought together over 1500 students and
2000 mentors from 90 countries worldwide, all for the love of
code. This year, we're welcoming 1125 student contributors and 175
Free and Open Source projects into the program. You can find out more
about each participating organization and abstracts of their accepted
students' proposals by visiting each organization's page, below. We'll
be posting regular news about the program to the Google Open Source Blog."

Complete Story

The Debian project is proud to announce that it has again been accepted by Google as a mentor organisation for the Summer of Code programme. We have been allocated twelve tasks for this year. Google will fund the students mentioned here to work full time on those tasks during their summer vacation, from May 26th to August 18th. read more

I was worrying that Google's Summer of Code might be fizzling out. Happily, it seems that things are fine: Google Summer of Code 2008 is on! Over the past three years, the program has brought together over 1500 students and 2000 mentors from 90 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. This year, we're welcoming 1125 student contributors and 175 Free and Open Source projects into the program. Sounds pretty healthy.

I've always assumed that Google's Summer of Code, a generous if self-interested offer to pay for students to do some directed open source coding during school/university holidays, was wildly popular - after all, who *wouldn't* want to get paid for hacking? But maybe there are the first signs of momentum being lost in this post, which suggests that the recent deadline extension hasn't led to a flood of applications: Extending the deadline has, for us, only resulted in six or seven more applications, and the number of applications is about 50% of what it was last year. I'm not sure why that is - persuading people to apply is not really within my power, at least. In the next few days, I guess I'll find out whether we have quality rather than quantity :-)

The planning for the Summer of Code is well underway. This summer, we're working within the Drupal community, and with the Open Source Labs. If you're a student, and want to get involved, read over the project lists (linked to above), and submit a proposal. Students receive 5,000.00 for their work. So, if you're a college or university student anywhere on the planet itching to expand the amount of freely available code in this world, sign up and make a proposal.