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Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. Google works with several open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund several projects over a three month period. Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together nearly 3300 students and more than 5,000 mentors & co-mentors from nearly 100 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. Through Google Summer of Code, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

The program invites students who meet their eligibility criteria to post applications that detail the software-coding project they wish to perform. These applications are then evaluated by the corresponding mentoring organization. Every participating organization must provide mentors for each of the project ideas received, if the organization is of the opinion that the project would benefit from them. The mentors then rank the applications and submit the ranked list to Google. Google then decides how many projects each organization gets, and selects the top-n applications for that organization, where n is the number of projects assigned to them.

Tux4Kids  is a volunteer project dedicated to creating fun and educational software for children. The project was started by Sam Hart over ten years ago and currently maintains and develops three software programs. The programs take their name from Tux, the Linux mascot. Tux Paint, led by Bill Kendrick, is an award-winning and widely used artistic graphics program. Tux Paint is enjoyable for everyone from the youngest children capable of using computers up through adults. Tux Math (originally written by Bill Kendrick, now led by David Bruce and Tim Holy) is a video game-style math drill program. It covers basic math operations up through topics such as negative numbers, factoring, and order-of-operations exercises. Tux Typing (originally written by Sam Hart, now led by David Bruce) offers word typing practice in the setting of two video game-type activities, as well as phrase and sentence typing for older students. They are developed natively on Linux and are included in all major desktop distributions, as well as non-Linux Free Software collections such as the FreeBSD Ports Collection and the MacPorts project for OS-X. Builds are also available for Microsoft Windows and BeOS. The aim is to avoid specific platform dependencies so the programs can be made available as widely as possible, including the computing environments that children are most likely to actually encounter in schools.

Akash Gangil is a student at NSIT who did a project called TuxMath under the Google Summer of Code 09 program with the organisation Tux4kids. He was among the 1000 students who were selected after a highly competitive application procedure in 2009.TuxMath is an arcade game that helps kids practice their math facts. This project aims to provide multiplayer facility over network (LAN) to the game.

The project enabled the prospect of competitive and collaborative playing mode in the game . Since TuxMath is being extensively used in some of the primary US schools.  Moreover , this implementation also provided a basic framework which could be duplicated in TuxType ,a typing tutor program of Tux4Kids.

Shown below are snapshots of the game play and lessons.

As an engineering student, this project was a great learning experience for Akash as it gave him a deeper insight into the software development process in the open source communities.  Also, he learnt how collaboration is achieved between developers spread over various time zones through version control systems (svn), IRC and mailing lists.

Akash Gangil can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you require more information.