GSoC 2018/projects

Interested in working on Replicant? Check out the Replicant project list

Campaigns Team

The FSF campaigns team works to advance free software through creating resources, planning events, grassroots organizing of actions, research and writing, fundraising, and momentum building around free software.

Contact: campaigns@fsf.org Campaigns team members: Dana Morgenstein, Georgia Young, and Molly de Blanc

Email Self-Defense Guide

The Email Self-Defense Guide (ESD) is one of our most popular resources and greatly in need of a refresh. There are many ways a project around the ESD could go. Some ideas include:

• Translation
• Update the infographic
• Update the text Writing can almost always be better and in this case soo emo o o
• Redesign the page Think the ESD needs a complete revamp? Sounds great!
• Adapt a print version We think it would be great to print the ESD out to share it with our friends. You could adapt the Guide into a PDF, perfect for physical distribution.
• Your idea here!

Profiles of free software contributors

We're revamping the Working Together for Free Software campaign. In order to put a face on free software, we would like to be publishing bi-weekly profiles of free software contributors, users, and enthusiasts. We have some past examples used. One of our goals here would be to create a backlog of posts.

Deliverables could include:

• List of potential interviewees / subjects
• Template of questions for subjects
• Profiles, including photos, highlighting just a few of the many different members of the free software community!

Actual profiles should be 500+ words, talking about why they participate in and care about free software, what ways they engage with the community, and where they want to go moving forward.

Application requirements:

• A brief (250-300 word) profile of yourself, reflecting what you think a shorter profile could look like.

Replicant

Interested in working on Replicant? Check out the Replicant project list

Projects include:

• U-Boot and Linux mainline related tasks and ports
• Advance the Optimus Black U-Boot and Linux mainline ports
• Port the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note 2 to Mainline Linux
• Advance the Kindle Fire (first generation) U-Boot and Linux mainline ports

Tech Team

Work with the FSF tech team!

Petition signing and rep calling software, as an extension to CiviCRM

We think that there is a a great need for free software tools that help oraganizations to create petitions and to encourage their constituents to call their representatives about pending legislation. There are some tools that can be adapted to this purpose, such as CiviCRM. We would like for a student to create an attractive, responsive and adaptable interface, via an extension or configuration of CiviCRM, that helps us keep track of signer and caller statistics and contact information in a way that is compelling to campaign visitors.

• Integrate with the CiviCRM backend.
• Should allow for theme customization for individual campaign.
• Should create one or more responsive themes.
• If possible, new CiviCRM "custom fields" should not be used for each campaign, to avoid the proliferation of custom fields applicable to eavery contact in CiviCRM.

Bitcoin and Ethereum as a first class local payment processor in CiviCRM

As cryptocurrencies become increasingly popular, the FSF continues to receive a high volume of Bitcoin and Ethereum donations. We do not wish to rely upon third party services to see our wallet amounts, or to be restricted to any particular currency exchange to convert our donations to US dollars. A CiviCRM extension that automates the process of receiving BitCoin and Ethereum donations as first class payment processors, that query local blockchains for wallet balances, and remove reliance upon a single third party exchange, should increase donations received by our, and other organizations, while protecting our assets and our freedom.

• Funds are to be delivered to wallets privately owned by the organization that runs the CiviCRM instance.
• Interact with local blockchains, and don't rely on third parties, to check wallet amounts.
• The extension must allow for delays in the propogation of funds.

Fix bugs in CiviCRM

As a non-profit organization that relies upon individual donors to fund our mission to protect and expand the scope of free software, we make great use of a free software constitent relational manager known as CiviCRM. Not only do we receive donations via CiviCRM, but we also use it to reach out to past donors and parties interested in our mission via its constituent mailing sytem. We have recently upgraded to CiviCRM 4.7, which has increased the number of features we now have, while reducing the number of bugs. We would like for a student to work on remaining upstream bugs in CiviCRM to improve this tool for us and other organizations around the world.

• Work with upstream developers and identify important bugs that have an easy to moderate difficulty level, and resolve them.
• Communicate with upstream devs to meet expectations of desired high level technical choices and patch quality.

Help Trisquel 8 come to fruition

One of the FSF's roles in the world of free software is to inform users about which distributions of GNU/Linux fully respect user freedom. One of the primary freedom respecting distributions in wide use is Trisquel. While Trisquel is not a project managed by the FSF, its lead developer Ruben Rodriguez, a senior sysadmin at the FSF, maintains the distribution in his free time. Trisquel 8 will be released around mid 2018, and there will be work to do on Trisquel 9 this summer, including package rebranding, bug fixes and resolving user freedom issues.

• Resolve outstanding packaging issues, including writing bug fixes for packages with reported problems.
• Resolve freedom issues, by removing anti-features from software.
• Patch software in order to rebrand it.