We are thrilled to announce that Google will be sponsoring 20 Drupal projects for Summer of Code 2007. The students, their projects, and the mentors for each are listed below. As the summer progresses, these students will be turning to the community for support and for help testing their work. To keep up-to-date with all of the latest SoC developments, please join the SoC 2007 working group and help out in whatever ways you can.

The projects this year show a strong focus on the core Drupal software and the infrastructure that makes Drupal.org run. For example, the translation, metrics, and RCS abstraction projects all intend to make project management on Drupal.org better in some way. The two core theme projects will help make Drupal a prettier and flashier looking software, and the search project will help make finding things with Drupal a bit easier.

Two projects focused on staging and scalability will help make Drupal more robust, two projects focusing on Drupal file handling will help shore up known weaknesses in that area. Two projects aiming to improve the taxonomy system will bring welcome extension to one of Drupal's best features, taxonomy, and the RSS/Atom project will help keep Drupal ahead of the curve in feed parsing.

Beyond that, it is easy to like projects that promise Ebay Integration, an SMS framework, Jabber integration, SVG support, a BitTorrent tracker, link autocompletion and extensions to the Case Tracker module. There is something for everyone.

Thank you to Google for the unbelievably generous support. This represents $100,000 worth of financial contributions to Drupal development, $10,000 of which will be donated to the Drupal Association. Google has helped Drupal become what it is today, and with this new support, the Drupal that emerges from the Summer of 2007 will be far better than it could have been otherwise.

Name
Project
Mentors
Gábor Hojtsy
Tools for Drupal translation teams and users
Gerhard Killesreiter (killes), Konstantin Käfer (kkaefer), Derek Wright (dww)

Andrew Morton (drewish)
Project quality metrics system
Angela Byron (webchick), Derek Wright (dww)
Maxim Khitrov (VokinLoksar)
Implementation of Jabber/XMPP communications interface
James Walker (walkah), Fabiano Sant'Ana (wundo)
Jakob Petsovits (jpetso)
RCS abstraction for the Project module
Andy Kirkham (AjK), Derek Wright (dww)
Klaas Van Waesberghe (instromaniac)
New Drupal Core Theme
Steven Wittens, Mark Janssen
Matthias Hutterer (mh86)
Taxonomy Manager
Nicholas Thompson, Konstantin Käfer (kkaefer), Ruben Canlas Jr. (cryptonomikon/benc)
Anthony Oliver
Extend Case Tracker Module
Jeff Eaton, Sugree Phatanapherom (sugree)
Amila Sampath (lucksy)
Designing a new core theme
Ted Serbinski, Mark Janssen, Steven Wittens
Balazs Dianiska
SVG Drawing support
Simon Hobbs (sime/emspace), Gerhard Killesreiter (killes)
Aron Novak
RSS/Atom Aggregation for Drupal Modules and Install Profile
Ken Rickard, Károly Négyesi (chx), David Norman (deekayen), Alex Barth
Scott Hadfield (hadsie)
Scalability, Load Balancing, and High Availability
Khalid Baheyeldin (kbahey), Rok Žlender, Owen Barton (grugnog)
Jakob Perz (hideout)
Ebay Integration Module
Gordon Heydon (gordonh), Simon Hobbs
Blake Joseph Lucchesi (blucches)
Improving Drupal's Search
Robert Douglass, Ruben Canlas Jr (cryptonomikon/benc)
Christopher P. Bradford (bradfordcp)
Drupal BitTorrent Tracker Module
Károly Négyesi, Shakur Shidane (flk), Heine Deelstra (Heine), Sugree Phatanapherom (sugree)
Kyle Cunningham (CitizenKane)
Private versus Public File Handling for Drupal
Darrel O'Pry (dopry), Heine Deelstra (Heine)
Allister Beharry (allisterbeharry)
Automated Staging Toolkit
Rok Žlender, Owen Barton (grugnog)
Benjamin Melançon
Community Managed Categories
Wolfgang Ziegler (fago), Shakur Shidane (flk), Owen Barton (grugnog)
William L. White
SMS Framework
Ian Ward, Ted Serbinski
Reinhard Jacobus Spijkerman (reins)
Unified File Management
James Walker (walkah), Darrel O'Pry (dopry), Dan DeGeest (dldege)
Gartheeban Ganeshapillai (garthee)
Autocompletion of Links
Kaustubh Srikanth, Dan DeGeest (dldege)