Community:SummerOfCode09:Brainstorming

This page is for submitting ideas for Summer of Code projects for 2009. Therefore, it will inevitably contain suggestions of wildly variable quality. Ideas approved by the SoC admins are here.

How To Make Good Suggestions

• 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. Potential mentors sign up here.
• Check back regularly. The administrators may have questions about your idea that you will need to answer.

(More thoughts on making a good list)

Suggestion List

Last year's ideas: Confirmed, Brainstorming

Mozilla Platform

Title	Abstract - links to details/bugs/etc	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
Web pages over rsync	A lot of web pages today are dynamic and so uncacheable, even though large parts of them are the same between requests. The rsync protocol is a great way of sending the deltas between two similar files in a small number of bytes. tridge has done a proof of concept, using proxies and librsync, for caching everything and using rsync to send deltas instead of complete pages when things change a bit. This has the potential to transform the web experience for users on slow connections. The project would be to fix up his proxy, and make a matching Firefox extension which together would form a proof of concept.	Gerv	tridge has agreed to co-mentor, but we need a Mozilla person who thinks this is cool to mentor as well.

Firefox

Title	Abstract - links to details/bugs/etc	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Thunderbird

Title	Abstract - links to details/bugs/etc	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
A user-focused front-end to bug submission	Like the bugzilla helper project, but specific to thunderbird, in order to limit the scope. see bugzilla helper for some thoughts, as well as this mdat thread	DavidA	Clarkbw	See below under Bugzilla - I think that in eight weeks, a student could probably do the wider project. But I'd love to have Clarkbw help me mentor it :-) - Gerv

Calendar

Title	Abstract - links to details/bugs/etc	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Camino

Title	Abstract - links to details/bugs/etc	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

SeaMonkey

Title	Abstract - links to details/bugs/etc	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Bugzilla

Title	Abstract - links to details/bugs/etc	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments
Better Bugzilla Helper	The current Bugzilla Helper was great for its time, but other Bugzillas have done their own step-by-step versions since which are easier to use. And people have had good ideas, like "here's a screenshot of a Thunderbird window - click on where you think the problem is" and so on. Someone needs to research what others have done, write a plan for a much better simple bug filing system, get it discussed and approved in the community, and build it.	Gerv	Gerv

L10n

Title	Abstract - links to details/bugs/etc	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Firefox Support (Sumo)

Title	Abstract - links to details/bugs/etc	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Rhino

Title	Abstract - links to details/bugs/etc	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments

Fennec

Title	Abstract - links to details/bugs/etc	Reporter	Mentor(s)	Comments