Rewrote most of the to do items with the imperative voice. Cleaned up duplicates. Created a "Six things everyone can do now" section for the top, in order of preference. (b687a4620)

new-contribute.html

@@ -40,31 +40,40 @@
 
 <!-- PUT CONTENT AFTER THIS TAG -->
 <pre>
-    Six Easy Pieces:
-    - We need users like you to try Tor out, and let the Tor developers know about bugs you find or features you don't find.
-    - Please consider running a server to help the Tor network grow.
-    - We especially need people with Windows programming skills to run an exit server on Windows, to help us debug.
-    - Run a Tor hidden service and put interesting content on it.
-    - Tell your friends! Get them to run servers. Get them to run hidden services. Get them to tell their friends.
-    - Consider joining the Electronic Frontier Foundation. More EFF donations means more freedom in the world, including more Tor development.
+    Six things everyone can do now:
+    <ol>
+    <li> We need users like you to try Tor out, and let the Tor
+    developers know about bugs you find or features you don't find.</li>
+    <li> Please consider running a server to help the Tor network
+    grow.</li>
+    <li> We especially need people with Windows programming skills to run
+    an exit server on Windows, to help us debug.</li>
+    <li> Run a Tor hidden service and put interesting content on it.</li>
+    <li> Tell your friends! Get them to run servers. Get them to run hidden
+    services. Get them to tell their friends.</li>
+    <li> Consider joining the Electronic Frontier Foundation. More EFF
+    donations means more freedom in the world, including more Tor
+    development.</li>
+    </ol>
 
 ****coding challenges****
 	**easy**
 	**medium**
 	**hard**
-  - use openssl aes when available
-  - do the kernel buffer style design
+  - Update crypto usage to use openssl aes when available.
+  - Implement a buffer design modelled after the linux kernel buffer design.
   - how do ulimits work on win32, anyway?  (We should handle WSAENOBUFS as needed, look at the MaxConnections registry entry, look at the MaxUserPort entry, and look at the TcpTimedWaitDelay entry. We may also want to provide a way to set them as needed. See bug 98.)
   - Implement reverse DNS (already specified)
-  - It would be nice to have a FirewalledIPs thing that works like FirewallPorts.
+  - Implement a FirewalledIPs config option that works like FirewallPorts.
   - Make configure.in handle cross-compilation
     - Have NULL_REP_IS_ZERO_BYTES default to 1.
     - Make with-ssl-dir disable search for ssl.
-  - Have clients and dirservers preserve reputation info over reboots.
-  - Support egd or other non-OS-integrated strong entropy sources
-  - password protection for on-disk identity key
-  - Possible to get autoconf to easily install things into ~/.tor?
-  - server descriptor declares min log level, clients avoid servers that are too loggy.
+  - Implement preservation of reputation through reboots for clients and dirservers. 
+  - Add in support egd or other non-OS-integrated strong entropy sources.
+  - Implement password protection for on-disk identity key
+  - Implement a way to get autoconf to install things into ~/.tor.
+  - Change server descriptors to declare log level.
+  - Add in support for clients to avoid servers that are too loggy based upon user configuration of acceptable log level.
   - Separate node discovery from routing to allow neat extensions. [Goodell?]
     - Add SetServerStatus control event to adjust verified/running status of nodes.
     - Add NoDownload config option to prevent regular directory downloads from happening.
@@ -76,49 +85,48 @@
     - Signing (and verifying) directories
     - Doing TLS handshake (this is very hard to separate out, though)
   - Buffer size pool: allocate a maximum size for all buffers, not a maximum size for each buffer. So we don't have to give up as quickly (and kill the thickpipe!) when there's congestion.
-  - Congestion control. Is our current design sufficient once we have heavy use? Need to measure and tweak, or maybe overhaul.
   - Add alternative versions of crypto.c and tortls.c to use libnss or libgcrypt+gnutls.
-  - If we have a trusted directory on port 80, optionally stop falling back to forbidden ports when fascistfirewall blocks all good dirservers.
-  - We're always looking for better Windows installers. Specifically, it would be great if somebody were to extend our NSIS-based windows installer to include FreeCap and Privoxy.
-    - Our OS X installer can't be uninstalled. Are there non-sucky OS X packagers that have uninstall capabilities? This is becoming an increasing bother.
-    - We need somebody to code up a GUI or other controller program, to do configuration, etc. See our control specification for details, and the rudimentary demonstration Python control script. No, we don't know what the interface should look like. You can use any license you want, but we'd recommend 3-clause BSD or maybe GPL; and we can only help out if your license conforms to the DFSG.
-    - Periodically people running servers tells us they want to have one BandwidthRate during some part of the day, and a different BandwidthRate at other parts of the day. Rather than coding this inside Tor, we should have a little script that speaks via the Tor Controller Interface, and does a setconf to change the bandwidth rate. Perhaps it would run out of cron, or perhaps it would sleep until appropriate times and then do its tweak (that's probably more portable). Can somebody write one for us and we'll put it inside tor/contrib/?
-    - Does somebody want to do up a patch so we can be an NT service? Or so we can go in the system tray?
-    - A good (portable, fast, clean, BSD-free) asynchronous DNS library would be really handy, so we don't have to keep forking DNS worker threads to do gethostbyname.
-    - We're always looking for better Windows installers. Specifically, it would be great if somebody were to extend our NSIS-based windows installer to include FreeCap and Privoxy.
-    - Our OS X installer can't be uninstalled. Are there non-sucky OS X packagers that have uninstall capabilities? This is becoming an increasing bother.
-    - We need somebody to code up a GUI or other controller program, to do configuration, etc. See our control specification for details, and the rudimentary demonstration Python control script. No, we don't know what the interface should look like. You can use any license you want, but we'd recommend 3-clause BSD or maybe GPL; and we can only help out if your license conforms to the DFSG.
+  - Implement a way to stop falling back to forbidden ports when FascistFirewall blocks all good dirservers, if there is already a good, cached directory locally.
+  - Extend our NSIS-based windows installer to include FreeCap and/or Privoxy.
+  - Develop a way to handle OS X installation and uninstallation.
+  - Develop a GUI or other controller program, to do configuration, etc. See our control specification for details, and the rudimentary demonstration Python control script. 
+  	-Design an interface for the control program. You can use any license you want, but we'd recommend 3-clause BSD or maybe GPL; and we can only help out if your license conforms to the DFSG.
     - Periodically people running servers tells us they want to have one BandwidthRate during some part of the day, and a different BandwidthRate at other parts of the day. Rather than coding this inside Tor, we should have a little script that speaks via the Tor Controller Interface, and does a setconf to change the bandwidth rate. Perhaps it would run out of cron, or perhaps it would sleep until appropriate times and then do its tweak (that's probably more portable). Can somebody write one for us and we'll put it inside tor/contrib/?
-    - Does somebody want to do up a patch so we can be an NT service? Or so we can go in the system tray?
-    - A good (portable, fast, clean, BSD-free) asynchronous DNS library would be really handy, so we don't have to keep forking DNS worker threads to do gethostbyname.
+    - Develop a way to become a Windows NT service.  
+    - Develop a systray app for Tor under MS Windows (all versions). 
+    - Integrate a good (portable, fast, clean, BSD-free) asynchronous DNS library so we don't have to keep forking DNS worker threads to do gethostbyname.
 
 ****documentation challenges****
 	**easy**
 	**medium**
 	**hard**
 
-  - Server instructions for OSX and Windows operators.
-  - Improve and clarify the wiki entry on port forwarding.
-   - Exit node caching: tie into squid or other caching web proxy.
-    - Does somebody want to help maintain this website, or help with documentation, or help with managing our TODO and handling bug reports?
-    - We may have too much documentation. It's spread out too far and duplicates itself in places. Can you help us consolidate?
-    - Please help translate the web page and documentation into other languages. See the translation guidelines if you want to help out. (Examples: French , Persian and Vietnamese.)
-    - Please fix up the FAQ Wiki, and if you know the answer to a question in the "unanswered FAQs" list, please answer it.
-    - Can somebody take a look at Martin's Squid and Tor page, and update it to reflect Tor's RedirectExit config option?
+  - Write server instructions for OSX and Windows operators.
+  - Improve and clarify the wiki entry on port forwarding. url?
+  - Document how to do exit node caching: tie into squid or other caching web proxy.
+  - Help maintain this website; code, content, css, overall layout,
+  - Help with documentation 
+  - Help consolidate documentation.  We may have too much documentation. It's spread out too far and duplicates itself in places. 
+  - Help translate the web page and documentation into other languages. See the translation guidelines if you want to help out. (Examples: French , Persian and Vietnamese.)
+  - If you know the answer to a Wiki question in the "unanswered FAQs" list, please answer it. url?
+  - Take a look at Martin's Squid and Tor page, and update it to reflect Tor's RedirectExit config option. url?
 
 ****testing challenges****
 	**easy**
 	**medium**
 	**hard**
 
-  - some of our tor servers have dns resolvers that resolve unknown addresses to 127.0.0.1.  which servers are these? it's a stock misconfiguration on the nameserver of somethingerother. is it something we can easily tell people to fix? or work around?
-  - web proxy gateways to let normal people browse hidden services.  (This has been done a few times, but nobody has sent us code.)
-  - investigate privoxy vs. freecap for win32 clients
-    - We've got a list of potentially useful programs you might run with Tor here. We also have the Torify howto. Can somebody try them out, simplify the explanations, expand them where they need it, document them better, and make them all-around more useful?
-    - We need somebody to fuzz Tor. Are there good libraries out there for what we want? What are the first steps? Win fame by getting credit when we put out a new release because of you!
+  - Test out why some of our tor servers have dns resolvers that resolve unknown addresses to 127.0.0.1.  
+  	- Identify the servers that experience this issue. 
+	- Identify how to cause and repair the issue in BIND, DJBDNS, or whatever daemon the misconfigured servers use.
+  - Figure out how to setup web proxy gateways to let normal people browse hidden services.  (This has been done a few times, but nobody has sent us code.)
+  - Investigate privoxy vs. freecap for win32 clients
+  - Evaluate, create, and document a list of programs that work with Tor.  
+  - Perform a security analysis of Tor with "fuzz". Determine if there good libraries out there for what we want. Win fame by getting credit when we put out a new release because of you!
   - Website volume fingerprinting attacks (Back et al, Hintz). Defenses include a large cell size, defensive dropping, etc. How well does each approach work?
   - The end-to-end traffic confirmation attack. We need to study long-range dummies more, along with traffic shaping. How much traffic of what sort of distribution is needed before the adversary is confident he has won?
-    - What sensitive info squeaks by privoxy? Are other html scrubbers better?
+  - Determine what sensitive info squeaks by privoxy. 
+  - Deteremine if there are other html scrubbers that are better than privoxy.
 
 ****research challenges****
 	**easy**
@@ -168,6 +176,7 @@
     - Right now the hidden service descriptors are being stored on the dirservers, but any reliable distributed storage system would do (for example, a DHT that allows authenticated updates). Can somebody figure out our best options and decide if they're good enough?
     - How hard is it to patch bind or a DNS proxy to redirect requests to Tor via our tor-resolve socks extension? What about to convert UDP DNS requests to TCP requests and send them through Tor?
     - Tor provides anonymous connections, but if you want to keep multiple pseudonyms in practice (say, in case you frequently go to two websites and if anybody knew about both of them they would conclude it's you), we don't support that well yet. We should find a good approach and interface for handling pseudonymous profiles in Tor. See this post and followup for details.
+  - Congestion control. Is our current design sufficient once we have heavy use? Need to measure and tweak, or maybe overhaul.
 
 Drop by the #tor IRC channel at irc.oftc.net or email tor-volunteer@freehaven.net if you want to help out!
 


...	...	@@ -40,31 +40,40 @@
40	40
41	41	<!-- PUT CONTENT AFTER THIS TAG -->
42	42	<pre>
43		- Six Easy Pieces:
44		- - We need users like you to try Tor out, and let the Tor developers know about bugs you find or features you don't find.
45		- - Please consider running a server to help the Tor network grow.
46		- - We especially need people with Windows programming skills to run an exit server on Windows, to help us debug.
47		- - Run a Tor hidden service and put interesting content on it.
48		- - Tell your friends! Get them to run servers. Get them to run hidden services. Get them to tell their friends.
49		- - Consider joining the Electronic Frontier Foundation. More EFF donations means more freedom in the world, including more Tor development.
	43	+ Six things everyone can do now:
	44	+ <ol>
	45	+ <li> We need users like you to try Tor out, and let the Tor
	46	+ developers know about bugs you find or features you don't find.</li>
	47	+ <li> Please consider running a server to help the Tor network
	48	+ grow.</li>
	49	+ <li> We especially need people with Windows programming skills to run
	50	+ an exit server on Windows, to help us debug.</li>
	51	+ <li> Run a Tor hidden service and put interesting content on it.</li>
	52	+ <li> Tell your friends! Get them to run servers. Get them to run hidden
	53	+ services. Get them to tell their friends.</li>
	54	+ <li> Consider joining the Electronic Frontier Foundation. More EFF
	55	+ donations means more freedom in the world, including more Tor
	56	+ development.</li>
	57	+ </ol>
50	58
51	59	**coding challenges**
52	60	easy
53	61	medium
54	62	hard
55		- - use openssl aes when available
56		- - do the kernel buffer style design
	63	+ - Update crypto usage to use openssl aes when available.
	64	+ - Implement a buffer design modelled after the linux kernel buffer design.
57	65	- how do ulimits work on win32, anyway? (We should handle WSAENOBUFS as needed, look at the MaxConnections registry entry, look at the MaxUserPort entry, and look at the TcpTimedWaitDelay entry. We may also want to provide a way to set them as needed. See bug 98.)
58	66	- Implement reverse DNS (already specified)
59		- - It would be nice to have a FirewalledIPs thing that works like FirewallPorts.
	67	+ - Implement a FirewalledIPs config option that works like FirewallPorts.
60	68	- Make configure.in handle cross-compilation
61	69	- Have NULL_REP_IS_ZERO_BYTES default to 1.
62	70	- Make with-ssl-dir disable search for ssl.
63		- - Have clients and dirservers preserve reputation info over reboots.
64		- - Support egd or other non-OS-integrated strong entropy sources
65		- - password protection for on-disk identity key
66		- - Possible to get autoconf to easily install things into ~/.tor?
67		- - server descriptor declares min log level, clients avoid servers that are too loggy.
	71	+ - Implement preservation of reputation through reboots for clients and dirservers.
	72	+ - Add in support egd or other non-OS-integrated strong entropy sources.
	73	+ - Implement password protection for on-disk identity key
	74	+ - Implement a way to get autoconf to install things into ~/.tor.
	75	+ - Change server descriptors to declare log level.
	76	+ - Add in support for clients to avoid servers that are too loggy based upon user configuration of acceptable log level.
68	77	- Separate node discovery from routing to allow neat extensions. [Goodell?]
69	78	- Add SetServerStatus control event to adjust verified/running status of nodes.
70	79	- Add NoDownload config option to prevent regular directory downloads from happening.
...	...	@@ -76,49 +85,48 @@
76	85	- Signing (and verifying) directories
77	86	- Doing TLS handshake (this is very hard to separate out, though)
78	87	- Buffer size pool: allocate a maximum size for all buffers, not a maximum size for each buffer. So we don't have to give up as quickly (and kill the thickpipe!) when there's congestion.
79		- - Congestion control. Is our current design sufficient once we have heavy use? Need to measure and tweak, or maybe overhaul.
80	88	- Add alternative versions of crypto.c and tortls.c to use libnss or libgcrypt+gnutls.
81		- - If we have a trusted directory on port 80, optionally stop falling back to forbidden ports when fascistfirewall blocks all good dirservers.
82		- - We're always looking for better Windows installers. Specifically, it would be great if somebody were to extend our NSIS-based windows installer to include FreeCap and Privoxy.
83		- - Our OS X installer can't be uninstalled. Are there non-sucky OS X packagers that have uninstall capabilities? This is becoming an increasing bother.
84		- - We need somebody to code up a GUI or other controller program, to do configuration, etc. See our control specification for details, and the rudimentary demonstration Python control script. No, we don't know what the interface should look like. You can use any license you want, but we'd recommend 3-clause BSD or maybe GPL; and we can only help out if your license conforms to the DFSG.
85		- - Periodically people running servers tells us they want to have one BandwidthRate during some part of the day, and a different BandwidthRate at other parts of the day. Rather than coding this inside Tor, we should have a little script that speaks via the Tor Controller Interface, and does a setconf to change the bandwidth rate. Perhaps it would run out of cron, or perhaps it would sleep until appropriate times and then do its tweak (that's probably more portable). Can somebody write one for us and we'll put it inside tor/contrib/?
86		- - Does somebody want to do up a patch so we can be an NT service? Or so we can go in the system tray?
87		- - A good (portable, fast, clean, BSD-free) asynchronous DNS library would be really handy, so we don't have to keep forking DNS worker threads to do gethostbyname.
88		- - We're always looking for better Windows installers. Specifically, it would be great if somebody were to extend our NSIS-based windows installer to include FreeCap and Privoxy.
89		- - Our OS X installer can't be uninstalled. Are there non-sucky OS X packagers that have uninstall capabilities? This is becoming an increasing bother.
90		- - We need somebody to code up a GUI or other controller program, to do configuration, etc. See our control specification for details, and the rudimentary demonstration Python control script. No, we don't know what the interface should look like. You can use any license you want, but we'd recommend 3-clause BSD or maybe GPL; and we can only help out if your license conforms to the DFSG.
	89	+ - Implement a way to stop falling back to forbidden ports when FascistFirewall blocks all good dirservers, if there is already a good, cached directory locally.
	90	+ - Extend our NSIS-based windows installer to include FreeCap and/or Privoxy.
	91	+ - Develop a way to handle OS X installation and uninstallation.
	92	+ - Develop a GUI or other controller program, to do configuration, etc. See our control specification for details, and the rudimentary demonstration Python control script.
	93	+ -Design an interface for the control program. You can use any license you want, but we'd recommend 3-clause BSD or maybe GPL; and we can only help out if your license conforms to the DFSG.
91	94	- Periodically people running servers tells us they want to have one BandwidthRate during some part of the day, and a different BandwidthRate at other parts of the day. Rather than coding this inside Tor, we should have a little script that speaks via the Tor Controller Interface, and does a setconf to change the bandwidth rate. Perhaps it would run out of cron, or perhaps it would sleep until appropriate times and then do its tweak (that's probably more portable). Can somebody write one for us and we'll put it inside tor/contrib/?
92		- - Does somebody want to do up a patch so we can be an NT service? Or so we can go in the system tray?
93		- - A good (portable, fast, clean, BSD-free) asynchronous DNS library would be really handy, so we don't have to keep forking DNS worker threads to do gethostbyname.
	95	+ - Develop a way to become a Windows NT service.
	96	+ - Develop a systray app for Tor under MS Windows (all versions).
	97	+ - Integrate a good (portable, fast, clean, BSD-free) asynchronous DNS library so we don't have to keep forking DNS worker threads to do gethostbyname.
94	98
95	99	**documentation challenges**
96	100	easy
97	101	medium
98	102	hard
99	103
100		- - Server instructions for OSX and Windows operators.
101		- - Improve and clarify the wiki entry on port forwarding.
102		- - Exit node caching: tie into squid or other caching web proxy.
103		- - Does somebody want to help maintain this website, or help with documentation, or help with managing our TODO and handling bug reports?
104		- - We may have too much documentation. It's spread out too far and duplicates itself in places. Can you help us consolidate?
105		- - Please help translate the web page and documentation into other languages. See the translation guidelines if you want to help out. (Examples: French , Persian and Vietnamese.)
106		- - Please fix up the FAQ Wiki, and if you know the answer to a question in the "unanswered FAQs" list, please answer it.
107		- - Can somebody take a look at Martin's Squid and Tor page, and update it to reflect Tor's RedirectExit config option?
	104	+ - Write server instructions for OSX and Windows operators.
	105	+ - Improve and clarify the wiki entry on port forwarding. url?
	106	+ - Document how to do exit node caching: tie into squid or other caching web proxy.
	107	+ - Help maintain this website; code, content, css, overall layout,
	108	+ - Help with documentation
	109	+ - Help consolidate documentation. We may have too much documentation. It's spread out too far and duplicates itself in places.
	110	+ - Help translate the web page and documentation into other languages. See the translation guidelines if you want to help out. (Examples: French , Persian and Vietnamese.)
	111	+ - If you know the answer to a Wiki question in the "unanswered FAQs" list, please answer it. url?
	112	+ - Take a look at Martin's Squid and Tor page, and update it to reflect Tor's RedirectExit config option. url?
108	113
109	114	**testing challenges**
110	115	easy
111	116	medium
112	117	hard
113	118
114		- - some of our tor servers have dns resolvers that resolve unknown addresses to 127.0.0.1. which servers are these? it's a stock misconfiguration on the nameserver of somethingerother. is it something we can easily tell people to fix? or work around?
115		- - web proxy gateways to let normal people browse hidden services. (This has been done a few times, but nobody has sent us code.)
116		- - investigate privoxy vs. freecap for win32 clients
117		- - We've got a list of potentially useful programs you might run with Tor here. We also have the Torify howto. Can somebody try them out, simplify the explanations, expand them where they need it, document them better, and make them all-around more useful?
118		- - We need somebody to fuzz Tor. Are there good libraries out there for what we want? What are the first steps? Win fame by getting credit when we put out a new release because of you!
	119	+ - Test out why some of our tor servers have dns resolvers that resolve unknown addresses to 127.0.0.1.
	120	+ - Identify the servers that experience this issue.
	121	+ - Identify how to cause and repair the issue in BIND, DJBDNS, or whatever daemon the misconfigured servers use.
	122	+ - Figure out how to setup web proxy gateways to let normal people browse hidden services. (This has been done a few times, but nobody has sent us code.)
	123	+ - Investigate privoxy vs. freecap for win32 clients
	124	+ - Evaluate, create, and document a list of programs that work with Tor.
	125	+ - Perform a security analysis of Tor with "fuzz". Determine if there good libraries out there for what we want. Win fame by getting credit when we put out a new release because of you!
119	126	- Website volume fingerprinting attacks (Back et al, Hintz). Defenses include a large cell size, defensive dropping, etc. How well does each approach work?
120	127	- The end-to-end traffic confirmation attack. We need to study long-range dummies more, along with traffic shaping. How much traffic of what sort of distribution is needed before the adversary is confident he has won?
121		- - What sensitive info squeaks by privoxy? Are other html scrubbers better?
	128	+ - Determine what sensitive info squeaks by privoxy.
	129	+ - Deteremine if there are other html scrubbers that are better than privoxy.
122	130
123	131	**research challenges**
124	132	easy
...	...	@@ -168,6 +176,7 @@
168	176	- Right now the hidden service descriptors are being stored on the dirservers, but any reliable distributed storage system would do (for example, a DHT that allows authenticated updates). Can somebody figure out our best options and decide if they're good enough?
169	177	- How hard is it to patch bind or a DNS proxy to redirect requests to Tor via our tor-resolve socks extension? What about to convert UDP DNS requests to TCP requests and send them through Tor?
170	178	- Tor provides anonymous connections, but if you want to keep multiple pseudonyms in practice (say, in case you frequently go to two websites and if anybody knew about both of them they would conclude it's you), we don't support that well yet. We should find a good approach and interface for handling pseudonymous profiles in Tor. See this post and followup for details.
	179	+ - Congestion control. Is our current design sufficient once we have heavy use? Need to measure and tweak, or maybe overhaul.
171	180
172	181	Drop by the #tor IRC channel at irc.oftc.net or email tor-volunteer@freehaven.net if you want to help out!
173	182
174	183

tor-webwml.git