tor-webwml.git

@@ -90,10 +90,16 @@ Farsi translations, for the many Tor users in censored areas.</li>

 <h2><a class="anchor" href="#Projects">Good Coding Projects</a></h2>

 <p>

-Here is a list of ideas that are proposed for the <a href="<page gsoc>">Google Summer of Code 2009</a>.

-If one or more of these ideas looks promising to you, please

-<a href="<page contact>">contact us</a> to discuss your plans rather than sending blind applications.

-You may also want to propose your own project idea which often results in the best applications.

+You may find some of these projects to be good <a href="<page

+gsoc>">Google Summer of Code 2009</a> ideas. We have labelled each idea

+with how useful it would be to the overall Tor project (priority), how

+much work we expect it would be (effort level), how much clue you should

+start with (skill level), and which of our <a href="<page

+people>#Core">core developers</a> would be good mentors.

+If one or more of these ideas looks promising to you, please <a

+href="<page contact>">contact us</a> to discuss your plans rather than

+sending blind applications. You may also want to propose your own project

+idea which often results in the best applications.

 </p>

 <ol>

@@ -130,6 +136,14 @@ currently does not exist and would need to be developed as well.

 <li>

 <b>Help track the overall Tor Network status</b>

 <br />

+Priority: <i>Medium to High</i>

+<br />

+Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Likely Mentors: <i>Karsten</i>

+<br />

 It would be great to set up an automated system for tracking network

 health over time, graphing it, etc. Part of this project would involve

 inventing better metrics for assessing network health and growth. Is the

@@ -198,6 +212,14 @@ experience with Qt is helpful, but not required.

 <li>

 <b>Improving Tor's ability to resist censorship</b>

 <br />

+Priority: <i>High</i>

+<br />

+Effort Level: <i>High</i>

+<br />

+Skill Level: <i>High</i>

+<br />

+Likely Mentors: <i>Nick</i>

+<br />

 The Tor 0.2.0.x series makes <a

 href="<svnsandbox>doc/design-paper/blocking.html">significant

 improvements</a> in resisting national and organizational censorship.

@@ -289,6 +311,14 @@ required.

 <li>

 <b>Tor Controller Status Event Interface</b>

 <br />

+Priority: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Likely Mentors: <i>Matt</i>

+<br />

 There are a number of status changes inside Tor of which the user may need

 to be informed. For example, if the user is trying to set up his Tor as a

 relay and Tor decides that its ports are not reachable from outside

@@ -414,6 +444,14 @@ Also tricky will be adding rate-limiting to Libevent.

 <li>

 <b>Tuneup Tor!</b>

 <br />

+Priority: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Skill Level: <i>Medium to High</i>

+<br />

+Likely Mentors: <i>Nick, Roger, Mike</i>

+<br />

 Right now, Tor relays measure and report their own bandwidth, and Tor

 clients choose which relays to use in part based on that bandwidth.

 This approach is vulnerable to

@@ -467,6 +505,14 @@ changes in performance on machines in different roles automatically.

 <li>

 <b>Improve our unit testing process</b>

 <br />

+Priority: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Likely Mentors: <i>Nick</i>

+<br />

 Tor needs to be far more tested. This is a multi-part effort. To start

 with, our unit test coverage should rise substantially, especially in

 the areas outside the utility functions. This will require significant

@@ -486,6 +532,14 @@ changes in performance on machines in different roles automatically.

 <li>

 <b>Help revive an independent Tor client implementation</b>

 <br />

+Priority: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Effort Level: <i>High</i>

+<br />

+Skill Level: <i>Medium to High</i>

+<br />

+Likely Mentors: <i>Karsten, Nick</i>

+<br />

 Reanimate one of the approaches to implement a Tor client in Java,

 e.g. the <a href="http://onioncoffee.sourceforge.net/">OnionCoffee

 project</a>, and make it run on <a

@@ -508,6 +562,14 @@ to a small degree about design.

 <li>

 <b>Bring moniTor to life</b>

 <br />

+Priority: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Skill Level: <i>Low to Medium</i>

+<br />

+Likely Mentors: <i>Karsten, Jacob</i>

+<br />

 Implement a <a href="http://www.ss64.com/bash/top.html">top-like</a>

 management tool for Tor relays. The purpose of such a tool would be

 to monitor a local Tor relay via its control port and include useful

@@ -548,18 +610,23 @@ with not too much involvement in the Tor internals.

 <li>

 <b>Porting Polipo to Windows</b>

 <br />

+Priority: <i>--</i>

+<br />

+Effort Level: <i>--</i>

+<br />

+Skill Level: <i>--</i>

+<br />

+Likely Mentors: <i>Martin</i>

+<br />

 Help port <a

 href="http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/polipo/">Polipo</a> to

 Windows. Example topics to tackle include:

-1) handle spaces in path names and understand the filesystem

-namespace — that is, where application data, personal data,

-and program data typically reside in various versions of Windows. 2) the

-ability to handle ipv6 communications. 3) the ability to asynchronously

+1) the ability to asynchronously

 query name servers, find the system nameservers, and manage netbios

-and dns queries. 4) use native regex capabilities of Windows, rather

-than using 3rd party GNU regex libraries. 5) manage events and buffers

+and dns queries. 

+2) manage events and buffers

 natively (i.e. in Unix-like OSes, Polipo defaults to 25% of ram, in

-Windows it's whatever the config specifies). 6) some sort of GUI config

+Windows it's whatever the config specifies). 3) some sort of GUI config

 and reporting tool, bonus if it has a systray icon with right clickable

 menu options. Double bonus if it's cross-platform compatible.

 </li>

@@ -618,9 +685,17 @@ the core of the Blossom effort.

 <li>

 <b>Implement a torrent-based scheme for downloading Thandy packages</b>

 <br />

+Priority: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Effort Level: <i>High</i>

+<br />

+Skill Level: <i>Medium to High</i>

+<br />

+Likely Mentors: <i>Nick</i>

+<br />

 <a

 href="http://git.torproject.org/checkout/thandy/master/specs/thandy-spec.txt">Thandy</a>

-is a relatively new software to allow automatic updates of Tor and related

+is a relatively new software to allow assisted updates of Tor and related

 software. Currently, there are very few users, but we expect Thandy to be

 used by almost every Tor user in the future. To avoid crashing servers on

 the day of a Tor update, we need new ways to distribute new packages

@@ -633,6 +708,14 @@ there should be an easy way for them to help distributing the packages.

 <li>

 <b>Torbutton equivalent for Thunderbird</b>

 <br />

+Priority: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Effort Level: <i>High</i>

+<br />

+Skill Level: <i>High</i>

+<br />

+Likely Mentors: <i>Mike</i>

+<br />

 We're hearing from an increasing number of users that they want to use

 Thunderbird with Tor. However, there are plenty of application-level

 concerns, for example, by default Thunderbird will put your hostname in

@@ -643,6 +726,14 @@ push to build a Thunderbird extension similar to Torbutton.

 <li>

 <b>New Torbutton Features</b>

 <br />

+Priority: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Effort Level: <i>High</i>

+<br />

+Skill Level: <i>High</i>

+<br />

+Likely Mentors: <i>Mike</i>

+<br/>

 There are several <a

 href="https://bugs.torproject.org/flyspray/index.php?tasks=all&project=5&type=2">good

 feature requests</a> on the Torbutton Flyspray section. In particular, <a

@@ -670,6 +761,14 @@ with not too much involvement in the Tor internals.

 <li>

 <b>Usability testing of Tor</b>

 <br />

+Priority: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Skill Level: <i>Low to Medium</i>

+<br />

+Likely Mentors: <i>Andrew</i>

+<br />

 Especially the browser bundle, ideally amongst our target demographic.

 That would help a lot in knowing what needs to be done in terms of bug

 fixes or new features. We get this informally at the moment, but a more

@@ -679,6 +778,14 @@ structured process would be better.

 <li>

 <b>Translation wiki for our website</b>

 <br />

+Priority: <i>High</i>

+<br />

+Effort Level: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Skill Level: <i>Medium</i>

+<br />

+Likely Mentors: <i>Jacob</i>

+<br />

 The Tor Project has been working over the past year to set up web-based

 tools to help volunteers translate our applications into other languages.

 We finally hit upon Pootle, and we have a fine web-based translation engine