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Specifically, the search giant has announced a $350,000 contribution to a joint open source initiative between Oregon State University and Portland State University. The grant, says Google, is intended to encourage open source software and hardware development and provide computing infrastructure for open source projects worldwide.

'We're extremely excited about the Oregon university open source initiative and thankful for Google's generous

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support,' said the state governor, Ted Kulongoski. 'This initiative will help our universities build on their leadership role in fostering the next generation of open source technologies, projects and experts in Oregon and around the world.'

The donation is part of a number of Google open source initiatives - it also highlighted a $2m donation to a 'Summer of Code' programme, offering students an opportunity to work on technical projects.

Organizations such as Apache and Samba and projects such as Nmap, Gaim and Internet2 took part in the programme, reports Chris DiBona, Google's Open Source Program Manager, on GoogleBlog. The new recruits reportedly 'made major improvements to the Nmap Security Scanner, including a more powerful graphical interface and a next-generation remote operating system detection framework,' he quotes Nmap's lead developer, Fyodor Vaskovich.