Google's annual Summer of Code event, which pays students to write and develop code for open source projects, is going to involve more students and more mentoring organisations than ever before. Get ready to sign up or get your open source project included.

The timeline for the 2011 Google Summer of Code has now been posted on its website.

This is a global program that in which student developers are paid stipends to write code for open source software projects over a three month period.

Since the program started in 2005, the program has paired up 4,500 students with more than more than 4,000 mentors from over 85 countries worldwide, giving the students exposure to real-world software development. In turn the participating projects gain source code and are also able to more identify and bring in new developers.

While not guaranteed, students often end up working for the company they summer-coded for, or at the very least having a longer term connection of one sort or another.

The seventh annual Summer of Code hopes to extend the scope of the program with a 25% increase of accepted student applications and a larger number of mentoring organisations.

The timeline shows that mentoring organisations can submit applications to Google between February 28 and March 11 and the period for Student applications runs from March 28 to April 8.

Google has a video explaining the history and ideals of Summer of Code:

Google Summer of code not only benefits students, who get to write real code not just assignments, but also the open source projects that they work with. If you have an open source project that could fit into the Summer of Code format you have until March 11 to submit an application.

More Information

Google Summer of Code 2011 site