Opportunities
This page is a list of financially supported opportunities (usually internships) for people (usually students) to work on open source projects.
Cross-project Programs
The following programs allow participants to choose among a large number of participating projects.
GNOME Outreach Project for Women
- Link: program website
- Who is eligible: Anyone assigned female at birth or currently identifying as a woman, genderqueer, genderfluid or genderfree. Participants to *not* need to be students, US citizens, or programmers.
- Deadline: March 31st, 2014
- Duration: May 19 to August 18
- Stipend: $5500
- Details: "The internships offered are not limited to coding, but include user experience design, graphic design, documentation, web development, marketing, translation and other types of tasks needed to sustain a FOSS project. The internship is expected to be a full-time effort, meaning that the participants must be able to spend 40 hours a week on their project. Participants will work remotely from home." Remote.
Google Summer of Code
- Link: program website
- Who is eligible: Students with "some programming experience at the university level". You do not need to be a CS or IT major. You do not need to be a US citizen.
- Deadline: March 21st, 2014
- Duration: May 19 to August 18
- Stipend: $5500
- Details: "Google Summer of Code is a program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects. Historically, the program has brought together over 7,500 students with over 440 open source projects, to create over 50 millions of lines of code." Remote.
Rails Girls Summer of Code
- Link: Program website
- Who is eligible: People identifying as female or socialized female are given priority. Not limited to students, but professional developers are excluded. (See here for more details.)
- Deadline: May 2nd, 2014
- Duration: Three months, starting 1st of July 2014. Full-time commitment is encouraged but not necessary.
- Stipend: $1500 per month; $4500 total
- Details: "Just like in Google Summer of Code and Ruby Summer of Code, students will be paid so they're free to work on Open Source projects for a few months. Unlike those programs, the Rails Girls Summer of Code is about helping students to further expand their knowledge and skills by contributing to a great Open Source project (rather than producing highly sophisticated code)." Remote.
DataONE Internships
- Link: Program website
- Who is eligible: Undergraduates, Graduate Students and Postgraduates (of 5 years or less)
- Deadline: Mar 18 2014
- Duration: 3 months (May 26 - Jul 25th - some flexibility)
- Stipend: $5000
- Details: Interns undertake a 9 week program of work centered around one of the projects listed below. Each intern will be paired with one primary mentor and, in some cases, secondary and tertiary mentors. Interns need not necessarily be at the same location or institution as their mentor(s). Interns and mentors are expected to have a face-to-face meeting at the beginning of the summer, maintain frequent communication throughout the program and interns are required to work in an open notebook environment.
Summer of Code in Space (SOCIS)
- Link: Program website
- Who is eligible: Undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in educational institutions in certain European countries (see here for more details).
- Deadline: May 15 2014
- Duration: 3 months (June-August)
- Stipend: 4000 Euros
- Details: "ESA Summer of Code in Space (SOCIS) is a program run by the European Space Agency. It aims at offering student developers stipends to write code for various space-related open source software projects. Through SOCIS, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers."
Single-project Programs
The following programs are for a specific project.
Wikimedia Individual Engagement Grants
- Link: program website
- Who is eligible: Criteria include "Individual or team of up to 4 individuals. Demonstrated involvement in the Wikimedia movement, with good community-standing. Willing to provide full legal name and address. Able to independently complete the project."
- Deadline: March 31st, 2014
- Duration: "Scoped to 6 months, with potential to renew for 6 more if need is shown."
- Stipend: "Maximum request USD 30,000. No minimum."
- Other details: "We encourage projects that provide opportunities to reach the Wikimedia movement's goal of spreading participation in free culture across boundaries of language, gender, and geography. We seek out opportunities for growth in under-represented demographics, smaller and newer Wikimedia projects, and communities in the global south. We focus on providing individuals within these communities with tools to help them succeed." Remote.
Center for Open Science
- Link: Internship posting
- Who is eligible: Unknown
- Deadline: Unknown
- Duration: Unknown
- Stipend: Unknown
- Other details: Located in Charlottesville, VA.
Khan Academy
- Link: program website
- Who is eligible: Unknown
- Deadline: Ongoing
- Duration: 12-24 weeks
- Stipend: Unknown ("Highly competitive salaries, housing stipends, and all travel covered")
- Other details: Looking for relatively experienced developers. On location in Mountain View, CA.
Fellowships
These fellowships are longer in duration (usually 10 months to a year) and generally not targeted at students.
Knight-Mozilla Fellows
- Link: http://opennews.org/fellowships/
- Who is eligible: unknown (seems to be programmer-focused, and not limited to US citizens)
- Deadline: likely August 2014
- Duration: 10 months, starting in Jan/Feb 2015
- Stipend: $60,000 plus benefits
- Other details: "Knight-Mozilla Fellows spend 10 months embedded with our partner newsrooms. Our Fellows are developers, technologists, civic hackers, and data crunchers who are paid to work with the community inside and outside of their newsroom to develop open-source projects. Fellows work in the open by sharing their code and their discoveries, helping to strengthen and build journalism's toolbox." "Fellows work on a range of projects including data, mapping, research, and analysis of impact."
Code for America
- Link: http://codeforamerica.org/fellows/apply/
- Who is eligible: unknown
- Deadline: unknown
- Duration: 11 months, starting Jan 2015
- Stipend: unknown
- Other details: "The Fellowship is a service-year program where civic-minded developers, designers, and product managers create small startup teams and partner with a local government for a year-long collaboration. Fellows and government staff work together to build apps, foster new approaches to problem solving throughout City Hall, and tackle issues the community is facing. In the past, teams have worked on solving for access to social services, alternatives to incarceration, and new avenues for public input."
Other Opportunities
The following opportunities do not quite fit the above categories. For instance, they may not be open source-focused (though they'll always be at least open source inclusive) or designed to support active work.
Anita Borg Pass-It-On awards
"The Anita Borg Systers Pass-It-On (PIO) Awards honor Anita Borg’s desire to create a network of women technologists helping one another. The cash awards, funded by donations from the Systers Online Community and others, are intended as means for women established in technological fields to support women seeking their place in the fields of technology. The program is called “Pass-It-On” because it comes with the moral obligation to “pass on” the benefits gained from the award.
Pass-it-on Award applications are open to any woman over 18 years old in or aspiring to be in the fields of computing. Awards are open to women in all countries and range from $500.00 to $1000.00 USD. Applications covering a wide variety of needs and projects are encouraged."