We are thrilled to announce that Google will be sponsoring 21 Drupal projects for Summer of Code 2008. We'd like to extend our sincere thanks to Google, who are making more than a $100,000 investment in the Drupal project.

This year particularly, there were many more projects that we would've liked to accept than we were able to (probably due at least in part to changes Drupal made to its SoC application process this year). The mentoring team deliberated fiercely over the past two weeks, and arrived at the final acceptance list detailed in the "read more" link.

Many of the projects this year build on work done during previous Summer of Codes. Drupal core will benefit from a new aggregator, improved search scoring, OpenID attribute exchange, revamped help system and color module, SimpleTest security scanner and generalized Validation API. There are also projects focused on improvements to the Drupal.org infrastructure, including ApacheSolr search, version control API, and the much demanded plugin manager for secure, automated updating of module and themes.

Some of Drupal's major contributed modules will also gain, including Views as widgets, Views RDF/XML/JSON output, Views & CCK chart support, extensions to Nodequeue and OAuth support for Services.

There's also a healthy component of brand new functionality, including an image manipulation GUI, memetracker, bookings API, Icon module, document import module and Usability testing suite.

If you'd like to keep up on Summer of Code happenings, would like to volunteer to help test students' projects, and/or would like to help students as they find their way in our community, please join the SoC 2008 working group and help out in whatever ways you can. Also check out Planet SoC to read blog entries from Summer of Code students across all mentoring organizations.

Here's to another great summer! :) Read on to find more details about Drupal's accepted proposals.

Application
Student
Experience w/ Drupal
Primary mentor
Secondary mentor(s)
A new aggregator for Drupal (discussion)
Aron Novak (Aron Novak)
GSoC '06 and '07; Feed API author
Alex Barth (alex_b)
Ashraf Amyreh (mistknight) and William O'Connor (csevb10)
Bookings API (discussion)
Carson Lam (c.lam)
NEW contributor
Matthew Vance (Matt V.)
Charlie Gordon (cwgordon7) and Martin Frost (fronbow)
Charts Module - Focus on Views and CCK Integration (discussion)
Russell Creech (Creech)
NEW contributor
Bruno Massa (brmassa)
N/A
Document Import Module (discussion)
Christopher Bradford (bradfordcp)
SoC '07 graduate; author of BitTorrent module
Ken Rickard (agentrickard)
Dan DeGeest (dldege)
Icon module (discussion)
Joakim Stai (ximo)
Author of the Node form layouts & Ext modules
Nathan Haug (quicksketch)
Roy Scholten (yoroy)
Image Manipulation GUI (discussion)
Miriam Sexton (Tistur)
Author of the Image Overlay Module
Balazs Dianiska (snufkin)
Bryan Ollendyke (btopro)
Improving the apachesolr module (discussion)
Thomas Seidl (drunken monkey)
Ported Private Message module to Drupal 6
Robert T. Douglass (robertDouglass)
Wolfgang Ziegler (fago)
Improving color.module for Drupal 7 (discussion)
Tony Narlock (skiquel)
Color.module patches, Rickroll module. ;P
Konstantin Käfer (kkaefer)
Dmitri Gaskin (dmitrig01)
Improving Version Control API and preparing it for usage on drupal.org (discussion)
Markus Schanta (adebar)
NEW contributor
Jakob Petsovits (jpetso)
Andy Kirkham (AjK)
Integrating OAuth open protocol with ServicesAPI to make it more secure and risk free (discussion: discussion)
sumit kataria (sumit kataria)
NEW contributor
Rob Loach (Rob Loach)
Andrew Morton (drewish)
Memetracker (Discussions: One, Two and Three)
Kyle Mathews (kyle_mathews)
Maintains Writing Assignment Module
Bill Fitzgerald/FunnyMonkey (bonobo)
Fabiano Sant'Ana (wundo), Scott Hadfield (hadsie)
Nodequeue Companion Modules (discussion)
Ezra Barnett Gildesgame (ezra-g)
Maintainer for the Subgroups for Organic Groups & Anonymous Contact modules
Kevin Bridges (cyberswat)
Jerad Bitner (sirkitree)
OpenID Attribute Exchange implementation/integration (discussion: discussion)
anshuprateek (anshuprateek)
NEW contributor
James Walker (walkah)
Jose A Reyero (Jose A Reyero)
PluginManager / Making theme and module management more friendly (discussion: community idea, student specific)
Joshua Rogers (JoshuaRogers)
Author of the User to User points module in User points contributed modules, patches to DrupalIt, Quotes and Creative Commons Lite.
Greg J. Knaddison (greggles)
Khalid Baheyeldin (kbahey))
Revamp Drupal's help system (discussion)
Gurpartap Singh (Gurpartap Singh)
Extremely active member of the community, and author/maintainer of multiple modules & themes, including Whois Lookup, Smileys, Alek 2.0, & Aquasoft
Dmitri Ariel Gaskin (dmitrig01)
Greg Dunlap (heyrocker)
Search Score Improvement (discussion)
Blake Lucchesi (BlakeLucchesi)
GSoC 07 graduate; Author of the modules: Fuzzy Search, Workflow Wordfilter & UberCart Coupon
Charlie Gordon (cwgordon7)
Frédéric G. Marand (fgm), Doug Green (douggreen)
Security scanner component for SimpleTest module (discussion)
Dario Battista Ghilardi (ingo86)
NEW contributor
Károly Négyesi (chx)
John Fiala (jcfiala)
Usability Testing Suite (discussion)
Jimmy Berry (boombatower)
GHOP graduate; driving unit testing in core; wrote click heatmap module
Bevan Rudge (Bevan)
Angela Byron (webchick)
Validation API Module for JS/PHP (discussion)
Craig Jackson (TapocoL)
Forum participant
David Norman (deekayen)
Bryan Stalcup (tecto) and Chris Yu (cYu)
Views as Widgets (discussion)
John Snow (jtsnow)
NEW contributor
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg (Alex UA)
Aaron Winborn (aaron), Roger Filomeno (rpfilomeno), & Jody Hamilton (Lynn)
Views plugins to output node lists as XML/RDF/JSON/XHTML (discussion)
Allister Beharry (allisterbeharry)
SoC '07 graduate; author of DAST module
Gordon Heydon (gordon)
Jonathan DeLaigle (grndlvl)
Drupal version: Drupal 6.x