The Lisp NYC user group got themselves listed as a sponsor for Google's Summer of Code.

They have a list in-progress of ways you can spend your summer coding Lisp and earning $4500, in case, as wmf says, you were too lazy to start a company:

• Create a Common Lisp interface to Posix and support it on several Lisp implementations.
• Port CMUCL's metaobject protocol implementation to SBCL.
• Create an implementation of SSL in Common Lisp.
• Create a Common Lisp library that implements the Jabber chat protocol.
• Work on merging GCL, the GNU Common Lisp implementation, into GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection.
• Improve the compiler optimizations in SBCL.
• Improve Closure, a web browser written in Common Lisp. Perhaps integrate JavaScript functionality. The first JavaScript implementation was written in Lisp.
• Translate a popular Python or Perl library into Common Lisp.
• Robocup: team strategy modifications based on input, either GA or macro based mods in real-time.
• Author a non-trivial CLRFI, possibly cross-platform multi-threading.
• Author a comphrensive HowTo: HowTo [not get] sued given the recent "advancements" in IP and copyright law
• Additions to electronic music generation software, see MuSIG.
• What percentage of functions of ANSI Common Lisp are used by production applications? Can it be broken down into the 80/20 rule?
• Upgrade a Common Lisp system such that it's streams compete with those of Java in features and performance.
• Add an interesting cross-platform feature to Slime. MOP support? Make it as easy to use as Visual Studio?
• Make Wikis impervious to today's automated spamming technology while still maintaining openness. Captchas vs community? Document how it may become upsurped.
• Cross Emacs'es Eshell with Tramp: make eshell work on remote hosts.
• Implement a Common Lisp MUD that is argeeable to agents but with robust security (not a trivial task), must also be able to use a Jabber for a client front-end.
• Create a portable, cross-platform user-runnable installer, possibly by combining ASDF and defsystem.
• Design a higher-math curriculum that would interest [non math oriented] computer-science students.
• Implement a self-hosted indexing and display system for the Lisp Resource Kit's many different forms and levels of content, including video.