Announcing Accepted Students for Google Summer of Code™ 2009

Students in 70 countries are now celebrating their acceptance in to the Google Summer of Code 2009 program! For our fifth year running the program, we've paired 1,000 students with mentors in more than 65 countries with more than 150 Free and Open Source software projects. Check out the program website for more details on each accepted student project. We're looking forward to bringing you more news about our accepted applicants in the coming weeks, but for now here's a peek at the top 5 countries for accepted student applicants: United States (212), India (101), Germany (55), Canada (44) and Brazil (43). In addition, the following countries are represented for the first time, each with 1 student: the Dominican Republic, Iceland, Luxembourg and Nigeria.

For those of you who aren't participating in the program, now is a great time to continue working on your project ideas and learning about Free and Open Source software. Each participating project is well placed to provide you with assistance in getting up to speed as a new contributor; take advantage of this opportunity to fix some bugs, hone your skills and, if you'd like, prepare for future instances of the program. 

Congratulations to all students whose proposals were accepted, and many thanks to all of our applicants. The community bonding period starts today, and we'd love to hear from all of you how you plan to spend this time getting ready to start coding in six weeks. Feel free to post a comment and share your thoughts.

By Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team