Have an open-source project that you need some help with? Well, Google is kicking off its third Summer of Code, an innovative program that pays college students to write open-source software over their summer vacation, and the folks at the searh giant want to talk to you.

For the next few months, the company will be working with open-source groups to select hundreds of student projects from thousands of applications. Then, during the summer, Google will distribute millions of dollars in stipends to the students and their mentoring organizations.

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Google's goal? To increase the world's supply of open-source software while giving young programmers inspiring, meaningful summer jobs.

This isn't just make-work. Last year's Google Summer of Code chose 630 students from 90 countries and brought them together with 102 open-source mentoring groups such as Ubuntu, Eclipse, Joomla!, and Dojo.

Several former students are still working on their projects, and many others will serve as mentors this year. One previous student now sits on the board of directors of the Drupal Association, the group behind the popular open-source content management system. Still others have become Google employees. Raulf Jarve's work on a Visual Basic compiler last Summer became a centerpiece for the latest release of Mono; he now works for Novell.

Read the full story on Linux-Watch: Google Summer of Code 2007 Heats Up

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