BRL-CAD joins the 2008 Google Summer of Code!

BRL-CAD has been accepted as a mentoring organization in the 2008 Google Summer of Code [1]! The program pays students a stipend of $4500 over the course of summer to work on open source projects. The student application period is open March 24th through March 31st. Students interested in participating should visit the BRL-CAD GSoC wiki pages [2] for more information about the submission process and details on some of our suggested project ideas [3].

[1] http://code.google.com/soc/2008/
[2] http://brlcad.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code
[3] http://brlcad.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/Project_Ideas

There are many project ideas listed to give some worthwhile project suggestions, though the most exciting and successful Summer of Code contributions often come from projects that students have devised themselves. We have developed an extensive list of ideas that we'd love to have worked on, but fresh ideas are also always welcome. Please consult with the BRL-CAD developers via the #brlcad IRC channel [4] on Freenode or through the brlcad-devel mailing list [5] regardless of the proposal to discuss your idea. Students are strongly encouraged to get involved early-on in the submission process, to discuss your proposal in depth, and to help the BRL-CAD mentors become better acquainted with you. Don't be shy interacting with the other developers.

[4] http://irc.brlcad.org
[5] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/brlcad-devel

Now in its fourth year running, the Google Summer of Code has brought together over 1500 students and 2000 mentors from 90 countries worldwide to open source software development, all for the love of code. One of the primary goals of the program is to introduce students to free open source software development with the specific intent of attracting those students as new long-term developers for that project.

For BRL-CAD, this is very much our primary reason for participating. With increased awareness, new developers, and increased developer activity, we hope to accelerate BRL-CAD development to benefit our entire user community. We eagerly look forward to working with our students on their projects and will be sure to share progress of our involvement throughout the summer.

Cheers!
Sean