Announcing Outreach Program for Women Internships for the Linux Kernel: Please Apply

I am pleased to announce The Linux Foundation is funding three Linux kernel internships through the Outreach Program for Women administered by the GNOME Foundation. These internships have a $5,000 stipend and come with a $500 travel grant to attend and speak at LinuxCon this fall. This is a great opportunity to work with a mentor and get started with kernel development, which as many articles report, is a great way to land a high-paying job. 

The official deadline for applying to OPW is May 1st. However, the kernel project joined late, so that deadline is flexible. Please fill out your initial application, and then update by May 17th with your initial patch. Applicants will be notified by May 27th if they have been accepted.

Participating areas of the kernel and dedicated mentors include:

• Ethernet: Mentors: Carolyn Wyborny (contact info) Anjali Jain (contact info)
• USB: Mentor: Sarah Sharp (contact info)
• x86 core: Mentors: Peter Waskiewicz Jr (PJ) (contact info)

More info on the projects can be found here. Thanks to Sarah Sharp for helping me find mentors and projects for this program. 

We get asked to fund a lot of projects and organizations (and actually fund quite a few) but I was particularly motivated to make this one happen. Karen Sandler and Marina Zhurakhinskaya have put together a well-run program that gets results. The percentage of women developing for the kernel is ridiculously low. According to the program, currently 25 percent of all software developers are women, but only 3 percent work in free and open source software. This program has the support and resources needed to get more women involved in free and open source software. It’s important for any project to attract and include talent from diverse sources, and I believe this program can make a difference. 

And if kernel development or even coding isn’t your thing, there are other internships available across a host of open source projects. Check out the list of participating organizations and apply.

You can learn more about the program by watching this recent talk given by Karen at The Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit. Please let us know if you have any questions and please spread the word to others.