Google has launched the second annual Code-in competition, an open source development contest for 13-17 year old students around the world.

This initiative offers teenage students the opportunity to take on a variety of tasks related to open source development, including writing and refactoring code, user interface design, translation, documentation and testing.

Last year's Code-in program saw 361 students from 48 countries take part, completing tasks for 20 organisations including GNOME, KDE, WordPress and Drupal.

This year, the contest opens to students on November 21 and participating organisations, chosen from those who took part in this year's Google's Summer of Code program, will be announced on November 9.

During the period of the competition, which lasts until January 16, 2012 students will attempt two rounds of tasks for the organisations' projects. Each task has a difficulty level and an associated number of points assigned to it – the winners will be those with the highest accumulated points score. Ten grand prize winners will be selected and will receive a trip to Google's California Headquarters to participate in an award ceremony and speak to current Google engineers.

More information on participation and rules can be found on the program's official web site.

Related news:

Google contest to get kids involved in Open Source

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