| I've mentored with x264 (for Videolan) for 3 years, this year going to be the 4th. It's an absolutely amazing program and has led to an enormous amount of success for our students so far. Almost all of our successful students have gone on to get real jobs (contract, part-time, or full-time) from their work on x264. Most had absolutely no experience in anything they worked on before they started. Examples: Holger Lubitz (2008): Got contract work from Avail Media and CoreCodec for his amazing assembly code skills. David Conrad (2009): Got hired by Apple due in large part to his multimedia experience with x264 and ffmpeg. Dylan Yudaken (2009): Used Summer of Code as a reference to get a software dev job in Britain (he's from South Africa). Oskar Arvidsson (2010): Now working part-time for CoreCodec to improve their assembly code. Simon Horlicks (2010): Getting paid by Avail Media to finish up his (huge) 2010 Summer of Code project. Daniel Kang (Google Code-In, 2010): Won top-10 in GCI, got into MIT as a result, and is probably going to get work from CoreCodec. Oh, and he's only 17. Additionally, x264 has a dual-licensing program -- all successful students, having contributed a large chunk to the codebase, get a share of the profits (like any other major developer). Here's our ideas page for this year: http://wiki.videolan.org/SoC_x264_2011 |