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CORVALLIS, Ore. - In yet another show of support for open source projects, Google has made another $300,000 gift to the Oregon State University Open Source Lab, increasing its cumulative support of academia's premiere open source development and hosting operation to more than $1 million.

The new funds will support OSL efforts to provide hosting services used by many of today's most recognized open source projects and communities. "Oregon State University's commitment to open source, both in and out of the computer science curriculum, positions them as a global leader in education," said Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager at Google.  "Google is proud to support OSU's continued work on improving open source software and making it available to people world-wide."

"Oregon State University is proud to continue our global open source outreach efforts as part of our 21st century land grant mission," said OSU President Ed Ray.  "Without support from Google and many other companies and individuals, it would be impossible to continue our work. Google sets an example that we hope others will follow as we prepare to celebrate the Open Source Lab's sixth year of operation."

The OSL is also participating this year as a mentoring organization in the annual Google Summer of Code program.  This marks OSL's fourth year as a participant. Google Summer of Code is a program which allows student programmers a chance to spend their summer working on open source projects. Google Summer of Code offers student developers stipends in exchange for contributing to various open source projects.

"The Google Summer of Code program is a great opportunity for students, not only at OSU, but all around the world," explained Jeff Sheltren, operations manager of the OSL.  "Students are able to build valuable coding experience, create long-lasting relationships with other developers, and experience first-hand how the open source development process works."

The latest contribution from Google is part of the Campaign for OSU, a comprehensive fundraising campaign that was publicly launched in late 2007. The campaign has set a goal of raising $625 million to be used for scholarships and fellowships, new research and learning facilities, endowments, and more. To date, the campaign has raised over $507 million.

In March, OSL announced its OSL Alliance Corporate Sponsorship Program, enabling commercial vendors to financially support the services that the open source lab provides to various open source projects. This tiered sponsorship program offers an increasing amount of benefits for corporate sponsors based on their cash or in-kind contributions. In addition to Google, other Platinum Sponsors of the OSL Alliance include IBM, RealNetworks, and TDS Telecom. OSL also offers individuals and small businesses the chance to support the lab through the Friends of OSL program. These programs are integral to the OSL, which relies on donations as its main source of revenue.

About the OSU Open Source Lab: The Oregon State University Open Source Lab is the home of growing, high-impact open source communities. Its world-class hosting services enable the Linux operating system, Apache web server, the Drupal content management system and more than 50 other leading open source software projects to collaborate with contributors and distribute software to millions of users globally. Through custom software development, vendor partnerships and industry events like the Government Open Source Conference (GOSCON), the Lab's staff and students encourage open source adoption in education, government, health care and other sectors. For more information, visit http://osuosl.org/. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. Drupal is a trademark of Dries Buytaert. Google Summer of Code is a trademark of Google.  Other company and project names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies and projects.