Source: http://code.google.com/summerofcode.html
Directly from the site: The Summer of Code is Google's program designed to introduce students to the world of Open Source Software Development.
This Summer, don't let your programming skills lie fallow...Use them for the greater good of Open Source Software and computer science! Google will provide a $4500 award to each student who successfully completes an open source project by the end of the Summer. (payment details can be found in FAQ)
By pairing applicants up with the proven wisdom and experience of established prominent open source organizations (listed below), we hope to make great software happen. If you can't come up with a great idea to submit, a number of our organizations have made idea lists available.
Commentry: Sounds good :) We need more initiatives like this. I think they will only pay projects that make the most progress from today till the deadline. Im thinking of making a Paypal Billing & Subscription manager.
This does sound like a pretty cool idea. I just emailed Scott Long of the FreeBSD project to see about joining them in the UFS Journalling work. $4500 is always a nice boost to money.