Community:SummerOfCode14:Brainstorming

Mozilla community members - submit proposals here for 2014 Google Summer of Code projects with Mozilla. (If this page looks empty, it's because accepted ideas have already been transferred to the official list.) The absolute last deadline for submitting ideas in time to help us get accepted by Google is February 14th.

Are you a students looking to apply to SoC with Mozilla? Your first stop should be the official list of ideas. This page is full of weird and whacky ideas, some of which are still on here for a reason - it could be that they are not properly defined, the wrong size, or don't have a mentor. That makes them less likely to get accepted. You can, of course, also submit your own ideas - you don't have to put an idea on this page and get it 'made official' in order to send in a proposal for it.

How To Write A Good Project Proposal

Before adding an proposal to this list, please consider the following:

• Be specific. It's hard to understand the impact of, or the size of, vague proposals.
• Consider size. The student has eight weeks to design, code, test and document the proposal. It needs to fill, but not overfill, that time.
• Do your research. Support the idea with well-researched links.
• Don't morph other people's ideas. If you have a related idea, place it next to the existing one, or add a comment.
• Insert only your own name into the Mentor column, and then only if you are willing to take on the responsibility. If you think the SoC admins won't know who you are, leave contact details.
• Check back regularly. The administrators may have questions about your idea that you will need to answer.
• Know when to give up. If you've added the same idea for the last three years and it hasn't made it to the official page, perhaps you can predict what will happen this time.

Suggestion 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)

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Firefox

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
Convert in-content XUL pages to HTML	Some of Firefox's in-content pages like about:newtab, about:memory, etc. use XUL. If we used HTML instead, it'd be easier for people to hack on them, they'd benefit from performance/bugfix improvements to the web, and so on. It would be nice to convert some of these pages away from XUL.	Good knowledge of HTML, CSS and JS. Knowledge of XUL and/or possibly the new shadow DOM specs will likely come in handy.	Gijs	Gijs
Firefox front-end contribution add-on	Build an add-on that works on Nightly and lets people write patches against the files in their Nightly, and easily put those up in bugzilla (in a format that can be grokked by hg qimport). Note that this should use (or rewrite/emscripten-recompile) the python preprocessor into JS and automatically download the required source files for files which are preprocessed.	Good knowledge of web tech like HTML, CSS, JS. Some knowledge of Firefox internals (like having written a XUL-based add-on before).	Gijs	Gijs

Firefox for Android

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Firefox OS / Boot2Gecko

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Mozilla Open Badges

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Thunderbird

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

SeaMonkey

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

NSS (Network Security Services)

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Bugzilla

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Firefox Support (SUMO)

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

QA

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Automation & Tools

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Documentation

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Mozilla Developer Network

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Mozilla IT and Infrastructure

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Persona / BrowserID

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Sync / Services

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Developer Tools

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Add-on SDK

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Foundation

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Release Engineering

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Instantbird

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
WebRTC support	Goal: Support voice/video chat using WebRTC via XMPP (and potentially other protocols). Add voice and video chat to Instantbird via WebRTC. This will involve adding APIs to allow protocols to prepare a voice/video connection to a contact and some basic user interface to show the video feed.	JavaScript, XPCOM, XUL	Florian Quèze	Benedikt Pfeifer	XEP-0320, XEP-0338, XEP-0339, XEP-0343 for XMPP
Single window UI:	Goal: Provide an alternative UI that works well in a single window. To design and implement a single-window UI that does not require a separate contact list and makes good use of the available space when the window is full-screen. Avenues to explore are e.g. multiple side-by-side chats (extending what is currently possible with tabs), and automatic resizing of conversations. The student should bring a good (if not complete) vision for this project, demonstrated via mockups in the application.	JavaScript, XPCOM, XUL	Florian Quèze
FileLinks in IMs / File transfer	Goal: File transfers that work reliably for every protocol. The Thunderbird Filelink feature allows users to upload attachments to an online storage service, replacing the email attachment with a link. This existing code could be used to implement file transfer. While some protocols support file transfer directly, this approach would provide a fallback that should always work. Designing and implementing a good UI frontend would also be required.	JavaScript, XPCOM, XUL	Florian Quèze	aleth	The frontend should be flexible enough to be able to handle other file transfer methods when they are implemented, e.g. WebRTC for XMPP or DCC for IRC.
Improve JS-XMPP	Goal: Ease working with the JavaScript XMPP implementation and implement new features. Include better syntax for XML handling, implementing handling of MUCs and other features. Feature-parity with libpurple's XMPP support is one of the prerequisites for replacing the libpurple XMPP plug-in that is currently used. One possible improvement would be to support voice and video calls between a JS-XMPP client and a Jingle client using WebRTC.	JavaScript, XPCOM	Florian Quèze	Patrick Cloke
Additional JavaScript protocol plug-ins	Goal: Implement new protocol plug-ins in JavaScript, or create more stable implementations of existing ones. Instantbird supports protocol plugins implemented in JavaScript. The student will either add support for new protocols in Instantbird (if so, explain why this protocol matters) or reimplement in JavaScript an existing protocol that is poorly supported by libpurple (if so, explain what will be better supported in the new implementation, or why the current implementation is not adequate). The student working on new protocols should take every opportunity to improve the code and APIs shared by all JS protocol plugins.	JavaScript, XPCOM, maybe js-ctypes	Patrick Cloke	Patrick Cloke	IRC, XMPP, Twitter and Yahoo have already been implemented in JavaScript and should not be considered; Some base code exists for OSCAR (AIM/ICQ); SIP, Bonjour and OSCAR are probably the most wanted protocols.
Off-The-Record messaging integration	Goal: Integrate OTR in an easy to use fashion. OTR is an often requested feature, but must be integrated in such a way to require little user interaction. Furthermore, the student could try to make Instantbird compliant with the secure messaging checklist suggested by Saint-Andre (link?)	JavaScript, XUL, XPCOM, maybe js-ctypes or C++	Patrick Cloke	Patrick Cloke

Emscripten

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Rust

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
Package Rust in key distributions	Having {apt-get,yum} install rust	deb packaging / Rust (LLVM appreciated)		Sylvestre Ledru & Luca Bruno	Main issues: https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/RustPackaging/Bootstrap & https://github.com/mozilla/rust/issues/4259. Will focus on Debian/Ubuntu first

Security Engineering

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Open(Art)

Title	Details	Skills Needed	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments