Drupal is excited to announce that we have 18 amazing projects in this year's Google Summer of Code. This is the fifth year that Drupal has participated in the program, bringing the total investment made by Google in Drupal through the SoC to over $400,000. This investment has resulted in numerous modules and core improvements, but more importantly it has brought in many long time contributors to the drupal project and helped keep numerous other contributors engaged and active in the community.

As usual we had way more great proposals than we had slots, but for the first time we have a father-son team (Jim and Jimmy Berry) working on SoC projects! Jimmy Berry actually convinced his dad to apply. We always try and expand the Drupal family/community with each Summer of Code, but the variety in projects and students of this year takes it to a whole new level!

This year's Summer of Code projects focus on integrating Drupal with other APIs, improving and enhancing many module suites, and helping to build new functionalities that will help keep Drupal at the cutting edge of what's possible with a CMS. Most of the projects still require co-mentors, and we'll be trying to connect these students with the community in a real world setting, so if you're interested in helping out with community bonding or code review, or even if you just want to keep tabs on the SoC progress, join us over at the Summer of Code group - it's not too late for you to help out!

Please help me in thanking Google for their support of Drupal and all Free & Open Source Software projects, and please welcome our Summer of Code 2009 Students.