Heat Map of FreeBSD Committer Locations

I spent some time playing with the Google Charts API this weekend and wrote a simple script to take the data from the XEarth freebsd.committers.markers file and turn it into a URL to generate an image of of the world with countries colored in darker shades of red according to how many FreeBSD committers reside there.

The data is not normalized by population size of the countries or any other factors. It might be more interesting to combine these committer counts with the Gapminder / Trendalyzer tool for visualizing the correlation with economic, technological, and cultural factors.

Student Applications for Google Summer of Code

It's time for students to apply to participate in Google's Summer of Code. We have identified many dozens of great potential projects and mentors. The student application period is very short, so applications must be prepared by March 31, but the earlier the better. If you are considering applying then please get in contact with some potential mentors so that they may help define your project and help you prepare a better application. The benefit to students of this program far exceeds the $4500 payment, as you'll have an experienced mentor to work with you all summer. Many of our former students from previous summers have gone on to make great contributions after the official end of the program.

FreeBSD Projects for Google Summer of Code 2008

The FreeBSD Project was again accepted as a mentoring organization into the Google Summer of Code. We are now very interested in putting together potential students, mentors, and projects. If you have an idea for a potential FreeBSD related summer of code project that isn't already listed here then please let me know (or follow up in the comments). Likewise, if you are interested in mentoring a student this year then please get in touch. Students can find all the details about applying for FreeBSD related Summer of Code projects on the FreeBSD Summer of Code web pages.