Great news! Debian has been accepted into the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program this year for the seventh time.

Now we are looking for students to work this summer with us in one of our exciting projects. If you are interested, now would be a good time to get in touch with the mentors; remember that discussing your application before submitting it is always recommended so that you can get feedback from the community.
Please also read the FAQ and timeline in the Google Summer of Code website.

Besides contacting with the mentors, you can also get in touch with us on our IRC channel #debian-soc (in irc.debian.org) and the soc-coordination mailing list if you have any questions.

I am hoping to see many great applications from students wainting to improve Debian :)

On Saturday evening I started talking with Mònica about Bug Squashing Parties and how they work. I am not sure how it happened, we started doing one. Then it was too fun to stop :P

NMUs by Mònica:

• t1lib #646470 This one had a patch by Colin Watson and Loïc Minier
• torcs: #646469 and 636009
• slsqlite: #646487
• webdruid: #646499
• vilistextum: #646501

Funny, there were a couple of NMUs by others uploading patchs by Mònica.

NMUs by Ana:

• uw-imap: #646481 This one had a patch by Aurélien Jarno.
• remind: #643466
• sipcalc: #646502
• libcsoap: #643420
• tuxpaint: #556509 With patch by Georgios M. Zarkadas.

I also closed #646449 (libosip2) that has been fixed in a new release upload, sponsored a NMU to Sven Joachim who had a patch sitting in the BTS for a month NMU-fixing #646147 (lie), sponsored dbus-c++ and reviewed for sponsoring a new version inspircd.

Debian has applied to the Google code-in program as mentoring organization. In the Google code-in, pre-university students (ages 13-17), have the opportunity of contributing to Debian, trying to complete different tasks.

We are hoping to get accepted and improve our outcome from last year. To achieve this, we need the help of more Debian contributors proposing and mentoring simple tasks for the students. Please take a take a look at the archives in the mailing list and join us with your proposals.
The list of tasks is at http://wiki.debian.org/GoogleCodeIn2011/Applying, we are specially missing translation and training tasks!

You can also join us in the IRC channel #debian-soc (irc.oftc.net)