Can you tell us about Google’s Summer of Code and GHOP programs?

Google Summer of Code is our program to help introduce college and university students to Open Source development. Drupal has been a participant in the program since its inception in 2005, and Angela Byron, a.k.a. webchick, began contributing to Drupal as a GSoC 2005 student. We’re looking forward to running the program once again this year, and interested folks can learn more by checking out our Frequently Asked Questions.

The Google Highly Open Participation Contest is a sister initiative to Google Summer of Code. Aimed at pre-college students over the age of 13, this contest brought together more than 350 students in 40 countries to complete more than 1000 tasks for the 10 participating Open Source projects. Drupal was one of the ten project participating in our pilot offering and the DROP program came about as a suggestion of one of their GHOP students, Charlie Gordon. We’re looking forward to running the contest again, and we’re planning for sometime in the last few months of the year.Stay tuned to the program discussion list for details.

Why does Google support open source projects like Drupal?

It’s no secret that Google uses a lot of Open Source software, and it was important to us to help keep the ecosystem healthy and vibrant. Projects like Drupal allow people to create content rich websites and the more folk creating great content on the web, the better the web becomes. What’s good for Open Source and what’s good for the web is good for Google, and we’re happy to help the Drupal project make the web better.

What are you most looking forward to at DrupalCon DC?

Sadly the ACM SIGCSE conference is going on at the same time as DrupalCon DC and I am unable to attend both. I’m sad I won’t get to hang out with so many of my friends, but I had a great time in Boston and Szeged. I’ll see all of you at the next DrupalCon!