Community:SummerOfCode17

This is Mozilla's list of green-lit project proposals for the 2017 Google Summer of Code.

Are you a student looking to apply to GSoC with Mozilla? You're in the right place. This page lists all the confirmed Google Summer of Code projects. New suggestions can be made on the Brainstorming page. Do not edit this page yourself; contact Mike Hoye or Florian for edits.

If you're interested in participating in Mozilla's GSoC program, you can choose from the list below, but you do not have to. You can submit a proposal for your own idea. You should look at the guidelines, though, and discuss your ideas or application in the #introduction channel on IRC.Mozilla.org. This is important, as GSoC projects must have a supporting member of the Mozilla community to evaluate and mentor them, named in the application.

Application Advice

You should do the following:

• Talk to the mentor. Contact details are on this page; if all you have is a nickname, reach out to them on IRC.
• Read the GSoC Student Guide and follow its advice.
• Read How Not To Apply For Summer Of Code and avoid doing the things listed there.
• Read our examples of good applications: 1, 2, 3.
• Apply on the GSoC site (note that we have an application template).
• It is entirely acceptable to apply for 2 or 3 projects, if more than one catches your eye; if the applications are high quality, that can improve your chances. Applying to more than that will seem like spam.

Questions about individual projects are best addressed to the potential mentor of that project. These should be listed in the table below. If you want to contact a mentor and contact details are not here, ask people in the #introduction channel on IRC: irc://irc.mozilla.org/#introduction. If you have questions of any other sort, send mail to Mike Hoye. He will try and respond promptly and direct your questions to the right person.

Project List

Here are the ideas lists from previous years.

Proposals can be in almost any part of the Mozilla project - don't be fooled by the "Code" in "Summer of Code". If there is no category below for your part of Mozilla, add one!

Mozilla Platform (Gecko)

Livelog Proxy

Write a server that privileged-clients can open a HTTPS connection to in-order to expose a webhook that http-clients can call. When normal http-clients access the exposed webhooks the connection will be reverse proxied to the privileged-clients over their out-going connection.

golang, github, http, web sockets, node.js

:jonasfj

:jonasfj

This is like to ngrok and localtunnel.me, read up on those. For performance reasons server should be written in golang, with client libraries in golang and node.js.

Firefox

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
about:telemetry redesign	about:telemetry is present on all builds of Firefox as a way for users to view the data being stored and sent via Telemetry. It was built before Firefox had multi-process Telemetry and without a clear design. This has resulted in a confusing HTML UI and barely-comprehensible JS.	webtech (HTML+CSS+JS) and Design	:chutten	chutten@mozilla.com	Some information
Boost Session Restore performance	Session (Re)store is important as a key feature of Firefox. Many people rely on it to re-open a tab from the past or recover from an unfortunate power outage. But making it blazing fast has not been our primary focus, until now. Your goal will be to help us make restoring any session snappy and blazing fast. Expect to learn a lot about the Firefox internals and interact with many core engineers during the SoC course.	JavaScript	:mikedeboer	:mikedeboer, :dao

Firefox for Android

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
Implement WebExtension APIs	WebExtensions are a cross-browser system for developing browser add-ons. Not all APIs are supported by Firefox for Android yet. The goal of this project is to: Implement some of the missing APIs (contextMenus, browsingData, [identity?], [proxy?]) Add automated test for those APIs Improve the tooling for building WebExtensions for Firefox for Android.	Java, JavaScript, Android	:sebastian	:sebastian

Automation & Tools

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
JS static analysis	Bring some static analysis in our Firefox Javascript code	Javascript experience, FLOW(?)	Sylvestre	Sylvestre	This project aims to evaluate and integrate more static analysis for Javascript code into some key sections of the Firefox code. We will focus on deploying FLOW on some part of the code as a proof of concept. Depending on the results, this will be extended to more components and/or integration in the developer workflow.
C++ static analysis	Add new checkers specific to our base code	Strong C++ experience, clang	Sylvestre	Andi	In order to tackle issues during the development phase, Mozilla wrote a bunch of static analyzers checkers based on clang-tidy. In this project, we will focus on writing more checkers (either generic to C/C++ or specific to Gecko programming patterns).
JSON in Sqlite	Query JSON Documents stored in Sqlite	Database, SQL, Python	Kyle Lahnakoski	Kyle Lahnakoski	Details
Regression localization from stack traces	Tool to blame a patch for causing a newly introduced crash.	C++, Python	Marco	Marco	The project would involve creating a tool that analyzes a set of stack traces, performing the intersection with the Firefox call graph (which can be generated using Clang) and a set of recently committed patches.
Improvements for crash clustering	Build a tool to improve crash clustering, currently based on the top method of the stack trace.	Python, C++	Marco	Marco	The project would involve finalizing https://github.com/marco-c/crashsimilarity; testing it more thoroughly; putting it in production.

Mozilla Developer Network

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
MDN Documentation Tester WebExtension	Rewrite the MDN doc tester add-on as a (well-tested, modern, documented) WebExtension that runs in Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and possibly Edge. Ideally reach feature parity with the existing Add-on SDK add-on and if time allows work on new test ideas that run against the MDN documentation.	Add-On/WebExtension experience (JavaScript, HTML, CSS)	Florian Scholz	Florian Scholz

Release Engineering

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
Improve Balrog's Admin API	Make Balrog's Admin API simpler and easier for clients to work with by moving to a Swagger-based approach.	python,rest apis	Ben Hearsum (bhearsum@mozilla.com)	Ben Hearsum (bhearsum@mozilla.com)

Rust

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
Rust + WebAssembly showcase	Rust and WebAssembly are going to be a great pair. Design and implement a simple and attractive web application, in Rust, that demonstrates the power of Rust on the web. Make fixes to upstream projects as necessary. Write a blog post about it.	Rust, web development	brson	brson, badboy	cc https://users.rust-lang.org/t/compiling-to-the-web-with-rust-and-emscripten/7627. Full proposal: https://gist.github.com/brson/c936d0f5e5ec8c806a41e23e87455665#file-rust-proj-1-md
Rust dashboard updates	Update rusty-dash.com to include additional metrics important to the project. This tool is vital to the day-to-day management of Rust, but it needs some dedicated attention to fulfill its promise.	Rust	brson	brson	Follow on work to https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/the-rust-project-needs-much-better-visibility-into-important-metrics/3367
Rust reproducible builds	Make the Rust build process produce the identical binaries when run with identical configurations. This improves the security of the Rust ecosystem by allowing others to double-check the official Rust builds	Rust, compilers, systems programming	brson	brson, mw	https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/verifying-rustc-releases-with-reproducible-builds/4502. Full proposal: https://gist.github.com/brson/c936d0f5e5ec8c806a41e23e87455665#file-rust-proj-2-md
Abstract the Rust standard library	The Rust standard library is very portable, but can be very, very portable. Refactor the standard library to pull out a platform abstraction layer.	Moderate Rust experience	brson	brson	https://internals.rust-lang.org/t/refactoring-std-for-ultimate-portability/4301
Rust cross-platform showcase project	Rust is very portable. Create a single showcase demo project that compiles for Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, wasm, and microcontrollers. Use real crates to accomplish some real task. Set up CI for all platforms on Travis. To be used as a teaching tool and for regression testing. Write a blog post.	Moderate Rust experience	brson	brson
rustc micro-optimization bonanza	Just go hog wild finding microoptimizations in rustc. Write a blog post bragging about it.	Performance optimization	brson	brson
Rust-specific benchmark suite	Today Rust uses perf.rust-lang.org to track _compile time_ performance, but nothing to track _runtime_ performance. Work with the Rust developers to create a benchmark suite specific to Rust.	Programming	brson	brson
Rust crate semver compatibility tool	Rust libraries follow the semver spec for indicating API compatibility, but conformance to semver is not enforced in any way - it is up to crate authors to guarantee their crates can be upgraded correctly. With Rust's strong type system it should be possible to mechanically check whether crates are obeying semver. This would be a huge boon to the stability of the Rust ecosystem.	Static analysis	brson	brson, badboy	https://users.rust-lang.org/t/warnings-for-breaking-semver/1415 https://users.rust-lang.org/t/signature-based-api-comparison/2377 . Full proposal: https://gist.github.com/brson/c936d0f5e5ec8c806a41e23e87455665#file-rust-proj-3-md
Reconstruct the Rust bootstrap chain	Rust is a self-hosted compiler, originally bootstrapped from OCaml, then self-bootstrapped several hundred times over the years. Today there is only one Rust 'lineage' of any note, the official compiler, but with compilers diversity of implementation is a security issue. If another party could replicate the Rust compiler it would provide assurance that the official isn't compromised by, or can recover from, a "trusting trust" attack. Although the historical information needed to rebootstrap Rust is mostly complete, it is not trivial to do. Construct a script that can reconstruct the modern Rust compiler from the original OCaml implementation, run it to completion, write a blog post.	Scripting, build systems	brson	acrichto

Servo

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
Off-main thread HTML parsing	Project page	Enthusiasm to learn Rust, comfortable reading/writing JavaScript	jdm	Anthony Ramine (nox)
Extend ServiceWorker implementation	Project page	Enthusiasm to learn Rust, comfortable reading/writing JavaScript	jdm	jdm

Security Engineering

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
Tor Experiment	Create a an experimental extension that bundles and launches Tor. Benchmark and report the amount of data transferred, time-to-first-byte, bandwidth differentials.	Add-On creation experience, Programming in C/Javascript.	Tom Ritter	Tom Ritter
StopTrackware.org	Create a clearinghouse of trackware lists like StopBadware.org, by creating a Track-the-trackers add-on that uses data "safeness" approach like Cliqz	Add-On creation experience (JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Networking), Cloud Service experience (python or node.js)	Luke Crouch	Luke Crouch

Localization

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
Design screenshot-based localization interface in Pontoon	We'd like to explore the feasibility of screenshot-based localization process in Pontoon - Mozilla's translation tool. To provide more translation context, each string will be accompanied by a screenshot showing how the string is used in the application. Additionally, localizers will have the ability to navigate and filter strings by screenshots, as well as preview their translations in the localized screenshots.	Web standards and Design. Django is a plus.	:mathjazz	:mathjazz

Security Assurance

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
TLS 1.3 scanning in Mozilla TLS Observatory	Mozilla TLS Observatory is a hosted service that provides hindsight and compliance checking on the configuration of HTTPS servers. The goal of this project is to improve the service to support scanning TLS 1.3 enabled endpoints, either by improving the existing scanner or writing an entirely new scanner.	Programming skills in C, Bash and Go. Strong understanding of TLS and micro-services architectures.	Julien Vehent	Julien Vehent	None

Mozilla Science Lab

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
science.mozilla.org phase 2	Start phase 2 of the Mozilla Science Lab website by implementing github authentication, members homepage, improve blog post readability, and add the ability to join projects	js, html, css, react, django, python	abbycabs	alanmoo	Detailed list and breakdown of all phase 2 work (only the tasks mentioned in details are expected to be completed by the student): Phase 2.1 https://github.com/mozilla/science.mozilla.org/milestone/11 Phase 2.2 https://github.com/mozilla/science.mozilla.org/milestone/12
Paper Badger - badgr migration & publisher integration	* Issuing badges to credit authors for their work on academic papers. In the final steps of our badgekit to Badgr migration, add tests to make sure we have feature parity and make the switch to Badgr in production. Implement a journal submission system integration with paper badger. This way, journals won't have to manually enter new badges in our system.	js, Badgr, APIs, authentication, node.js, react	abbycabs	abbycabs	github: https://github.com/mozillascience/paperbadger
Study Group participation visualization	study groups meet all over the world, running regular events share skills, co-work and create community around open science. Right now there's no easy way to see all the study group events. Write a script to collect data for all study group events happening world wide. Each study group is a fork of this template repo. Each event is an issue in the repo (example of events as issues). here is a script that collects all events for a specific repo. Please update this to collect data from all forks. Visualize this data in a way that shows study group activity all around the world! viz: calendar, map	js, html, css, python (or another scripting language), data visualization	Zannah	Aurelia	main study group repo: https://github.com/mozillascience/studyGroup

Thimble

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
Address stability issues within Thimble	Main task: Get Thimble to write directly to AWS instead of writing to a database first.	js, html, css	gideon	gideon	Full list of issues affecting thimble's stability: https://github.com/mozilla/thimble.mozilla.org/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue%20is%3Aopen%20label%3A%22good%20first%20bug%22%20-label%3A%22assigned%20to%20contributor%22
Integrating VR capabilities into Thimble	Goal: Thimble makes it easy to create multi user VR experiences, allowing the whole classroom to take virtual field trips through student projects. This is made possible by doing any of these: Integration of the A-frame visual inspector, which gives the user lots of control over an object properties in a custom UI Custom Quick-Edit UI for different types of objects Develop large, visual menu of 3D objects make it easy to build interesting scenes quickly A wide range of starter projects	js, html, css	gideon	gideon	This work would be done in parallel with work done by CDOT on making Thimble a VR experience building tool thimble repo: https://github.com/mozilla/thimble.mozilla.org
Thimble and Remote Mentorship	Goal: Use together.js to enable a multi-user environment on Thimble that is tailored to work as a virtual teaching environment for HTML/CSS/JS Details: Fixing issues in together.js to make it functional working on ways to sync state between Thimble's editor and the remote Thimble editor(s Syncing filesystems across Thimble editors with WebRTC	js, html, css	gideon	gideon	thimble repo: https://github.com/mozilla/thimble.mozilla.org