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The Berkman Center was founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. We represent a network of faculty, students, fellows, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and virtual architects working to identify and engage with the challenges and opportunities of cyberspace.

We investigate the real and possible boundaries in cyberspace between open and closed systems of code, of commerce, of governance, and of education, and the relationship of law to each. We do this through active rather than passive research, believing that the best way to understand cyberspace is to actually build out into it.

Read more about the Berkman Center.

Check out the GSOC overview page.

Apply to work with Berkman.

Ideas for Google Summer of Code 2009

The opportunities at Berkman break down into several sub-projects.

Sub-Projects:

• Cohort CRM: a Rails-based CRM that - in the classic unix model - does few things and does them well
• Media Cloud: a project that tracks news content comprehensively – providing open, free, and flexible tools
• StopBadware: a project that seeks open, collaborative, Internet-based approaches to combating malware
• Scriptgen Coding Tool Enhancements: a data collection tool created in Ruby on Rails (part of the Internet & Democracy project)

Berkman Google Summer of Code FAQ

The answers to some of the frequently asked questions so far.

General Questions

• If someone is selected as a student coder through the Summer of Code, will they need to be in the Boston area over the summer?
• Is this limited to Harvard and/or Berkman coders?

Cohort CRM

• Please describe what you mean by "mass mailing."
• Please talk about deduplication.
• Please talk about database-level validations and constraints.