Google summer of code in geoinformatics
Jezek, Jan
Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a program that offers student developers stipends to create new open source programs or to help currently established projects. Google is working with a variety of open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund several hundred projects over a three-month period. GSoC is program focused on students from the whole world who are working on projects used by real software products and finally they are accordingly honored. This year it was the first time when there were also projects focused on geographic information systems (GIS). This presents also a great opportunity for geoinformatics community to contribute to GIS related software development. The aim of this paper is to describe GSoC from the project-based learning perspective. Details about communication, time-line and project management will be discussed and also a lot of statistics of participant geographic distribution will be presented. Finally, the present paper also describes author's personal experience (the author participated as a student developer at GSoC 2006 with Refractions Research as mentoring organization) and also deliverables of GSoC for GIS software products.
Event: Scientia Est Potentia : Knowledge is Power
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