Difference between revisions of "Summer of Code 2008"

= Introduction =

XMPP is the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, an XML wire protocol for real-time communication that emerged from the [http://www.jabber.org/ Jabber] open-source community. Our community is not a traditional open-source project because it is not focused on a single codebase. Instead, our community is centered around open standards and open protocols. However, even though there are closed-source implementations of XMPP, we still have a strong commitment to open code and there are many free and open-source projects in our community.

We have participated in the Summer of Code since its inception and have learned many lessons, among them:

* We try to choose half a dozen excellent projects and really focus on them.

* It is difficult to choose excellent projects, so the more helpful information you can provide, the better.

* We take the Summer of Code very seriously and we expect our students to treat it like a full-time job.

If you have any questions about the XSF's involvement with the Google Summer of Code, please contact [https://stpeter.im/?page_id=1968 Peter Saint-Andre] via email or (preferably) IM.

=How to Apply=

Application instructions are available at the main GSoC site -- see [http://groups.google.com/group/google-summer-of-code-announce/web/guide-to-the-gsoc-web-app-for-student-applicants here].

Here is what you should include:

* Some details about you (what code languages you like, what programming courses you've taken, etc.)

* Results of your preliminary research into the protocols and codebases you might work on

* Your ideas about how to approach the project, including an outline of what work you think is required, a rough timeline of the work, etc.

* Possible problems you think you may face

== Coccinella ==

=== Jingle video using iaxclient ===

* Proposed Mentor: [http://coccinella.im/matben Mats Bengtsson]

* Programming language: C (knowledge of Tcl/Tk is a plus but '''not''' required!)

==== Project description ====

The goal is to integrate and implement the video part from the [http://iaxclient.sf.net/ iaxclient] project with [http://coccinella.im/ Coccinella].

This project involves two distinct tasks:

# Write a Tcl/Tk widget integrating video from the iaxclient package. There already is a Tcl package available in Coccinella for iaxclient audio that can be reused.

# Include this video widget into Coccinella. A Tcl package supporting the Jingle protocol exists and is being used by the audio package.

=== Jingle file transfer ===

* Proposed Mentor: [http://coccinella.im/matben Mats Bengtsson]

* Programming language: C/C++ and/or Tcl

==== Project motivation ====

Transporting files from one user to another is plagued by NATs and firewalls. In ancient times a standard Tcp connection was all that was needed. Instead various application level protocols have been implemented on top of Udp which handles NATs much better. This "reinventing the wheel" by having to reimplement a kind of pseudo Tcp stack on top of Udp is a very unfortunate situation which lacks standardization.

==== Implementation ====

This projects aims to use Google gTalks Jingle implementation as a starting point. Ufortunately it is written in C++ and deeply tied into the application notifier system and therefore not reusable as is. Instead the task will be to use the Tcl Udp C code implementation, and essentially use gTalks PseudoTcp class as a wrapper. There are two possible options here: either do a pure Tcl script implementation of the tricks used in PseudoTcp, which I'm not sure is possible, or just translate the C++ class into C code and wrap up the tcludp package to a pseudo tcp (ptcp) command. This should work just like the standard Tcl socket command and should be able to use it transparently.

==== Relevant XEP ====

=== Aquarium for kids ===

* Proposed Mentor: [http://coccinella.im/matben Mats Bengtsson]

* Programming language: Tcl/Tk

==== Project description ====

This project involves the creation of an interface for kids to Coccinella. You need to create a new roster style, the fishy roster style, with an aquarium containing fishes that represents the contacts (like [http://ralphm.net/ ralphm's Jabber Aquarium]). The fishes need to be be animated with [http://www.jabber.org/jeps/jep-0107.html User Mood]. For example, when a contact is happy, the fish will swim quickly in the aquarium with a smile on his face. The graphics will be done in 2D, but when time allows, they can be made in 3D.

This project will involve mostly new code, and few boring code rewriting.

== Psi ==

=== Message history ===

* Proposed Mentor: [http://kismith.co.uk Kevin Smith]

In this project, the student will create a themable, WebKit-based chat dialog. Additionally, the chat dialog should be themable with the distributed Adium themes, in order to be able to enjoy a wide set of themes out of the box. Another property of this chat dialog is that it would be decoupled from Psi itself, which would ease initial development, testing, and allow easy porting to other Qt-based IM clients.

== Gajim ==

=== Plugin system ===

* Proposed Mentor: Yann Leboulanger

* Proposed Mentor: Yann Leboulanger

* Programming language: Python

== New Clients ==

=== Modern Web-based Jabber/XMPP Client ===

* Proposed Mentor: [http://el-tramo.be Remko]

In order to achieve the goal, the student should try to re-use as much of the existing libraries and frameworks, in order to be able to focus on the goal of the project. For the server-side backend, there is a good choice of frameworks in many different languages, including Ruby and Python. For the frontend, existing frameworks exist to build good looking javascript based user interfaces without much trouble (e.g. [http://extjs.com/ ExtJS]).  

stpeter saith: You mean like [http://soashable.com/ Soashable]? :-)

== xmpp4moz/SamePlace ==

=== PubSub ATOM aggregator ===

This is an idea to develop a XUL [http://dev.hyperstruct.net/xmpp4moz xmpp4moz]-based PubSub ATOM aggregator.

I would be willing to (help) mentor this project -- -- [[User:Itay|Itay]]

=== Mozilla PubSub application configuration extension ===

This extension would allow to save Firefox browser settings, bookmarks, history, cookies, Sherlock and OpenSearch search engine plugins ; and Thunderbird email, newsgroups and feeds accounts, and configuration settings on an XMPP server. -- [[User:Kael|Kael]]

= Servers =

== ejabberd ==

Those proposals for GSOC projects could be implemented in any Jabber server and programming language. However, they are specially easy to implement in ejabberd for several reasons:

=== Page for Account Registration & Password Recovery ===

Develop a module for ejabberd that provides a page to create account, change password and recover lost password.

'''Motivation'''

There are two different problems that are of great importance for public servers and the XMPP federation as Jabber gets increasing popularity:

* In-band account registration of Jabber accounts (XEP-0077) can be abused easily by spammers. For example, a spammer could create a million of accounts in jabber.org easily, and then put 100 zombie machines to login to those accounts and send spam to everywhere in the XMPP Federation.

* There isn't a generalized way to recover a forgotten password of a Jabber account. Since In-band account registration (XEP-0077) is the standard way to create Jabber accounts since 1999 until now, Jabber accounts do not have email accounts associated. Hence, it isn't possible to recover a forgotten password automatically. The solution right now is to contact an admin in the Jabber server, which will change the password manually and send an email with the new password.

'''Details'''

This proposal attempts to fix both problems. It consits in three related tasks:

* Provide a registration page. The page requests: username, password, repeat-password, email address. When filled the form, it registers the account in the local ejabbed server. The email address is NOT stored in the user's vcard; it is stored in a secure a private way, just like the password. Optional elements:

# The page could also include a captcha to require registration

# The page could send an email instead of registering the account. If the email is responded correctly, then the account is created

* Provide a page to change the password and email addresProvide also. Of course, this page will require the valid username and password in order to change the information.

* Provide a page to recover the forgotten password. The page only requires a valid username. Then it sends an email to the address stored for that account. If the email is answered correctly, the password is changed and the new one is sent by email.

=== Time Tracker ===

Implement an ejabberd module that tracks how much time a Jabber account is online in each presence type. Reports can be check by the user and/or admin.

'''Example Track'''

* When I start my work in the morning, I start my Jabber client and login to my working account. Then set presence 'busy' with status message 'Doing GSOC: write cases for test suite'. The Time Tracker captures that and stores the meaningful information.  

* At midday I change to 'xa' with text 'Launch time'.  

* During the afternoon I set to 'busy' again, but status message 'Doing study: homework'.  

* When I am interrupted for more than 5 minutes, my Jabber client sets to 'autoaway', and the Time Tracker will also notice that.  

'''Example Report'''

At the end of the day, I can access the Time Tracker interface (web, adhoc or whatever) and ask the report. For example, it can report:

* ejabberd 2.0.0 provides the feature request_handlers in the service ejabberd_http, so it's easy to provide web pages. Example: mod_http_bind, mod_http_fileserver, mod_webpresence.

* There are contributed modules that track presence changes and can be used as examples: mod_logxml, mod_statsdx, ...

=== XMPP to XMPP gateway ===

With the release of exmpp, writing an XMPP client is now easy. Writing a gateway that allow user of a given ejabberd server to reuse their other or old XMPP/Jabber account it a useful project.

== Openfire ==

Here are some nice features that would be nice to have in Openfire. We are still working on the list which should be ready for early next week (March 25th). If you have other ideas not listed here feel free to send us an email to discuss it or post it [http://www.igniterealtime.org/community/community/developers/gsoc08?view=discussions here].

   * File Repository and Sharing (including WebDAV)

   * File transfers for gateways

===Contacts===

== PJS ==

The PJS project aims to create a reliable, correct and highly scalable XMPP server framework in Python, not unlike what ejabberd is to Erlang. It was started as an undergrad project at the University of Toronto in February 2008. By the start of GSOC, the server should have the following components:

* basic connection handling

* internal message routing (with chained handlers)

The server will not be production quality by the end of the semester, though it will have substantial progress toward this goal. Some of the things that may need to be written:

* S2S handling (already has parts of it)

* Privacy lists (may have parts of it by May)

===Contacts===

Also see [http://wiki.python.org/moin/SummerOfCode Python's SOC page] (under Dr.Project)

==== Project Description ====

Write a XMPP transport/gateway which enables to use other jabber accounts through only one. It should cover things like transporting presence, messages, roster groups, PEP events and if there is time left even more. Transports like that will make migration XMPP accounts easier.

=== Sync mode for clients ===

=== JMS-to-XMPP bridge ===

==== Project Description ====

=== Universal Transport via libpurple ===

Write up a platform independent implementation of XEP-0174 for gloox. Platforms supported should be *NIX (including Mac OS X), linux and windows.

= Other =

== ISS (Instant Syndicating Standards) ==

=== Project description ===

Please see website or contact [http://wiki.jabber.org/index.php/User:NickVidal Nick Vidal] for more details.

== PubSub Wordpress and Drupal plugins ==

Blogs could support an autodiscovery element like :

<pre>

<link rel='alternate' type='xxxx' href='xmpp:romeo@jabber.org?;node=blog'/>

Drupal implements a [http://drupal.org/node/312 Distributed Authentication System] which allows to use Jabber credentials to log onto every Drupal sites (e.g. [http://www.ejabberd.im/user/help#jabber the Ejabberd site]). But it requires to pass the password to third-party sites often without encryption.

== SSH authentication validation with XEP-0070 ==

=== Project description ===

When authenticating to the SSH server by password or by key, the user would receive an XMPP confirmation message which would need to be validated to achieve authentication. In this manner, even if the SSH password or the key were compromised they still could not be used.

It has the drawback of requiring to have an XMPP server always running and may not be suitable for some cases.

== XMPP Webmin interface ==

=== Project description ===

This is an idea to implement an XMPP interface for

It would also allow to select events to be notified of (via messages or PubSub), and processes to monitor (via presence or PubSub), perhaps in conjunction with SNMP.

=== Links ===

[http://flyspray.org Flyspray]

== Client-Independent D-Bus Service for Jingle Audio ==

Many Jabber clients will want to implement the Jingle Audio protocol (and eventually other Jingle protocols as well), but may lack the technical possibility to keep an internal implementation.  (or just the will to reinvent the wheel ☺)  [http://emacs-jabber.cvs.sourceforge.net/emacs-jabber/tox/ Tox] (Talk Over XMPP) is a D-Bus service meant to provide Jingle functionality to a Jabber client able to communicate over D-Bus.  It uses the Farsight library.

The goals of this project are:

* Beat Tox into good enough shape to perform audio conversations

* Make at least one Jabber client implement the Jingle protocol through Tox (possibly jabber.el, which is the current development platform)