Are you a student and want to earn a stipend for writing open-source code? The Google's stupendously successful Summer of Code 2011 program pays student developers to write code for open-source software projects.

Google pays a stipend of $5500 for writing code -- $5000 to you, and $500 to the mentoring organization. Google opens up applications on March 28, ending 10 days later, on April 8.

The requirements are tight -- you need to be enrolled in an accredited educational organization, have a work permit in the country where you are a student, among others. So if you are an Indian student in a US college, you need to check your work permits. Check the FAQ for more information.

Essentially, the program hooks student developers up to "mentor" companies developing software. For organizations, this is a way to get free student labor. But this is fantastic experience for students, and it'll look good on your resume.

If you look through the projects last year, some code was written by the leader, Jumpyshoes, was for VideoLAN, the popular multimedia program. So this program has been successful.

The program was established in 2005 and about 4,500 students from 85 countries have written code for 300 participating organizations.