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authorelijah <elijah@riseup.net>2015-02-20 16:01:47 -0800
committerelijah <elijah@riseup.net>2015-02-20 16:01:47 -0800
commit031d81c7558823f1c8f308ef5e3f9c9d1915d720 (patch)
tree5fcd539fbea17dfb7c46d1b1cfabb4d67534c84e /pages/docs/get-involved/project-ideas.md
parent56f64dabd7f7dbc626dd4f27f4461e5333086aba (diff)
updated project ideas, removed old job posting, fixed haml errors.
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diff --git a/pages/docs/get-involved/project-ideas.md b/pages/docs/get-involved/project-ideas.md
index 5da5dd8..ff725d7 100644
--- a/pages/docs/get-involved/project-ideas.md
+++ b/pages/docs/get-involved/project-ideas.md
@@ -20,7 +20,8 @@ Email
We have an extension for Thunderbird to autoconfigure for use with Bitmask. It would be great to do the same thing for Apple Mail. [Some tips to get started](http://blog.adamnash.com/2007/09/17/getting-ready-to-write-an-apple-mailapp-plug-in-for-mac-os-x/) and a "links to many existing Mail.app plugins"[http://www.tikouka.net/mailapp/]
* Contact: drebs
-* Difficulty: Medium
+* Priority: Low
+* Difficulty: Low
* Skills: MacOS programming, Objective-C or Python (maybe other languages too?)
### Microsoft Outlook plugin
@@ -28,16 +29,21 @@ We have an extension for Thunderbird to autoconfigure for use with Bitmask. It w
We have an extension for Thunderbird to autoconfigure for use with Bitmask. It would be great to do the same thing for Outlook.
* Contact: drebs
-* Difficulty: Medium
+* Priority: Low
+* Difficulty: Low
* Skills: Windows programming
-### Mailpile fork
+Soledad Client
+---------------------------
-[Mailpile](http://www.mailpile.is/) is a new mail client written in Python with an HTML interface. Mailpile is interesting, because it is one of the few actively developed cross platform mail clients. Since the Bitmask application is also in Python, it would be nice to distribute a version of Mailpile with Bitmask that is preconfigured to work with whatever email accounts you have in Bitmask. Additionally, you would need to modify Mailpile so that it does not cache a copy of all email itself (since Bitmask app already keeps a copy in a client-encrypted database), and remove the OpenPGP parts of Mailpile (since this is already handled by Bitmask).
+### Soledad port
-* Contact: chiiph
-* Difficulty: Medium
-* Skills: Python
+[[Soledad]] is our synchronized, client-encrypted, searchable database. It is written in Python, based on the Python implementation of U1DB (U1DB has similar features to Soledad, but has no encryption). There is also a C version of U1DB called libu1db. This project would be incrementally replace portions of the Python implementation with a version that can be compiled in order to make binding available on Android and iOS.
+
+* Contact: drebs
+* Difficulty: Hard
+* Priority: High
+* Skills: C/C++, using crypto libraries correctly, test driven development.
Linux
---------------------------
@@ -46,7 +52,7 @@ Linux
The Bitmask client application is entirely ported to Debian, with every dependency library now submitted to unstable. However, many of these packages are not in other flavors of linux, including RedHat/Fedora, SUSE, Arch, Gentoo.
-* Contact: kali, micah, chiiph
+* Contact: kali, micah, ivan
* Difficulty: Medium
* Skills: Linux packaging
@@ -54,7 +60,7 @@ The Bitmask client application is entirely ported to Debian, with every dependen
The Bitmask client application is entirely ported to Debian, with every dependency library now submitted to unstable. However, many of these packages are not in *BSD.
-* Contact: chiiph
+* Contact: ivan
* Difficulty: Medium
* Skills: BSD packaging
@@ -65,7 +71,7 @@ Mac OS
We are currently running openvpn through cocoasudo to run OpenVPN with admin privs, we should not depend on a third party app and handle that ourselves. The proper way to do this is with [Service Management framework](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#samplecode/SMJobBless/Introduction/Intro.html).
-* Contact: chiiph, kali
+* Contact: ivan, kali
* Difficulty: Medium
* Skills: Mac programming
@@ -73,18 +79,10 @@ We are currently running openvpn through cocoasudo to run OpenVPN with admin pri
Currently, we block DNS leakage on the OpenVPN gateway. This works, but it would be better to do this on the client. The problem is there are a lot of weird edge cases that can lead to DNS leakage. See [dnsleaktest.com](http://www.dnsleaktest.com/) for more information.
-* Contact: kali, chiiph
+* Contact: kali, ivan
* Difficulty: Medium
* Skills: Mac programming
-### Support for older Mac OSs
-
-We support OSX 64bits x86 >= 10.7, but in order to support versions <10.7 there are a list of libraries that need to be built compatible with the specific SDK version and with PPC support (basically, boost and certain python modules).
-
-* Contact: chiiph, kali
-* Difficulty: Medium to hard
-* Skills: Mac programming
-
Windows
-------------------------------
@@ -92,7 +90,7 @@ Windows
The bundle needs to be a proper signed application in order to make it safer and more usable when we need administrative privileges to run things like OpenVPN.
-* Contact: chiiph
+* Contact: ivan
* Difficulty: Easy to medium
* Skills: Windows programming
@@ -100,7 +98,7 @@ The bundle needs to be a proper signed application in order to make it safer and
Right now we are building OpenVPN with a manifest so that it's run as Administrator. Perhaps it would be better to handle this with User Account Control.
-* Contact: chiiph, kali
+* Contact: ivan, kali
* Difficulty: Medium
* Skills: Windows programming
@@ -108,7 +106,7 @@ Right now we are building OpenVPN with a manifest so that it's run as Administra
Currently, we block DNS leakage on the OpenVPN gateway. This works, but it would be better to do this on the client. The problem is there are a lot of weird edge cases that can lead to DNS leakage. See [dnsleaktest.com](http://www.dnsleaktest.com/) for more information.
-* Contact: kali, chiiph
+* Contact: kali, ivan
* Difficulty: Medium
* Skills: Windows programming
@@ -116,7 +114,7 @@ Currently, we block DNS leakage on the OpenVPN gateway. This works, but it would
We dropped Windows support because we couldn't keep up with all the platforms, Windows support should be re-added, which means making sure that the gpg modules, Soledad and all the other components are written in a proper multiplatform manner.
-* Contact: chiiph, drebs
+* Contact: ivan, drebs
* Difficulty: Easy to Medium
* Skills: Windows programming, Python
@@ -124,7 +122,7 @@ We dropped Windows support because we couldn't keep up with all the platforms, W
We are aiming to distributing bundles with everything needed in them, but an amount of users will want a proper Windows installer and we should provide one.
-* Contact: chiiph, kali
+* Contact: ivan, kali
* Difficulty: Medium
* Skills: Windows programming
@@ -132,7 +130,7 @@ We are aiming to distributing bundles with everything needed in them, but an amo
All the python modules tend to be built with migw32. The current Windows bundle is completely built with migw32 for this reason. Proper Windows support means using Visual Studio (and in our case, the Express edition, unless the proper licenses are bought).
-* Contact: chiiph
+* Contact: ivan
* Difficuty: Medium to Hard
* Skills: Windows programming
@@ -140,7 +138,7 @@ All the python modules tend to be built with migw32. The current Windows bundle
We have support for Windows 32bits, 64bits seems to be able to use that, except for the TAP driver for OpenVPN. So this task is either really easy because it's a matter of calling the installer in a certain way or really hard because it involves low level driver handling or something like that.
-* Contact: chiiph
+* Contact: ivan
* Difficulty: Either hard or really easy.
* Skills: Windows programming
@@ -151,25 +149,26 @@ Android
Currently the Android app chooses which VPN gateway to connect to based on the least difference of timezones and establishes a configuration for connecting to it by a biased selection of options (port, proto, etc) from the set declared by the provider through the API. For cases where a gateway is unavailable or a network is restricting traffic that our configuration matches (e.g. UDP out to port 443), being able to attempt different configurations or gateways would help finding a configuration that worked.
-* Contact: meanderingcode, parmegv, or richy
-* Difficulty: Easy to medium
+* Contact: parmegv
+* Difficulty: Easy
* Skills: Android programming
### Ensure OpenVPN fails closed
For enhanced security, we would like the VPN on android to have the option of blocking all network traffic if the VPN dies or when it has not yet established a connection. Network traffic would be restored when the user manually turns off the VPN or the VPN connection is restored. Currently, there is no direct way to do this with Android, but we have a few ideas for tackling this problem.
-* Contact: meanderingcode, parmegv, or richy
-* Difficulty: Hard (Medium but meticulous, or harder than we think)
-* Skills: Android programming, applicable linux skill like iptables
+* Contact: parmegv
+* Difficulty: Easy
+* Skills: Android programming
-### Port libraries to Android
+## Improved UX
-Before we can achieve full functionality on Android, we have a lot of Python libraries that need to either be ported to run directly on Android or to rewrite them natively in Java or JNI. We have been pursing both strategies, for different libraries, but we have a lot more work to do.
+There are several areas where the user experience could be improved, particulary where it comes to our attempts to block unencrypted traffic.
-* Contact: richy, meanderingcode, parmegv
-* Difficulty: varies
-* Skills: Android programming, compiling, Python programming.
+* Contact: parmegv
+* Priority: Medium
+* Difficulty: Depends
+* Skills: Android programming
Installer and Build Process
----------------------------------------------
@@ -178,25 +177,24 @@ Installer and Build Process
We rely on a group of binary components in our bundles, these include libraries like boost, Qt, PySide, pycryptopp among many others. All these should be built in a reproducible way in order to be able to sign the bundles from many points without the need to actually having to send the bundle from the main place it gets built to the rest of the signers. This will also allow a better integration with our automatic updates infrastructure.
-* Contact: chiiph
+* Contact: ivan
* Difficulty: Medium to hard
### Automatic dependency collector for bundle creation
The bundles are now used as a template for new versions, the first bundle was basically built by hand, adding one dependency after the other until it all worked. We would like to automate this process completely, since new dependencies tend to be added at certain points. One possibility would be to use PyInstaller dependency recollection code, another would be to use some of Python's module introspection to recursively collect dependencies.
-* Contact: chiiph, kali
+* Contact: ivan, kali
* Difficulty: Medium to hard
### Lightweight network installer
The bundles are big. It would be great if we could reduce its size, but that's not always possible when you are providing so many different things in one application. One way to work around this would be to have a really tiny application that runs Thandy, has the proper certificates and has a tiny lightweight UI so that the user can install the bundle's packages one by one and even pick parts that the user might not want. Just want to run Email? Then there's no need to download OpenVPN and all the chat and file sync code.
-* Contact: chiiph
-* Difficulty: Medium to hard
+* Contact: ivan
+* Difficulty: Medium
* Skills: C/C++, Python
-
New Services
----------------------------------
@@ -204,15 +202,17 @@ New Services
There are multiple password keepers that exist today, but they don't necessarily have a way to sync your passwords from device to device. Building a Soledad backed password keeper would solve all these problems implicitly, it's only a matter of UI and random password generation.
-* Contact: drebs, chiiph, elijah
-* Difficulty: Easy to medium.
+* Contact: drebs, ivan, elijah
+* Priority: Low
+* Difficulty: Easy to medium
* Skills: Python
### Notepad app
This idea is basically a simple note pad application that saves all its notes as Soledad documents and syncs them securely against a Soledad server.
-* Contact: chiiph, kali, drebs
+* Contact: ivan, kali, drebs
+* Priority: Low
* Difficulty: Easy to medium
* Skills: Python
@@ -224,7 +224,7 @@ Miscellaneous
The idea is to allow or require tokens in the new user signup process. These tokens might allow to claim a particular username, give you a credit when you sign up, allow you to sign up, etc.
* Dependency: token-based signup in webapp API.
-* Contact: elijah, chiiph
+* Contact: elijah, ivan
* Difficulty: Easy
* Skills: Python
@@ -232,21 +232,21 @@ The idea is to allow or require tokens in the new user signup process. These tok
One thing that we really need is a team of people that is constantly updating their versions of the code and testing the new additions. Basic knowledge of Git would be needed, and some really basic Python.
-* Contact: mcnair, elijah, chiiph
+* Contact: mcnair, elijah, ivan
* Difficulty: Easy to medium, depending on the QA team that is managed.
### Translations
Do you speak a language that's not English? Great! We can use your help! We are always looking for translators for every language possible.
-* Contact: ivan, kali, chiiph
+* Contact: ivan, kali, ivan
* Difficulty: Easy
### Support for OpenPGP smart cards
A really nice piece of hardware is OpenPGP smart cards. What would be needed is a way to save the generated key in the smart card instead of in Soledad (or both, should be configurable enough) and then migrate the regular OpenPGP workflow to support these change.
-* Contact: chiiph, drebs
+* Contact: ivan, drebs
* Difficulty: Medium
### Device blessing
@@ -261,23 +261,15 @@ Add the option to require a one-time code in order to allow an additional device
There are situations where the service provider you are using through the bitmask client might want to notify some event to all its users. May be some downtime, or any other problems or situations. There should be an easy way to push such notifications to the client.
-* Contact: chiiph, elijah
-* Difficulty: Easy to medium
+* Contact: ivan, elijah
+* Difficulty: Easy
* Skills: Python
### Quick wipe of all data
Some users might be in situations where being caught with software like OpenVPN is illegal or basically just problematic. There should be a quick way to wipe the existence of the whole bundle and your identity from provider.
-* Contact: chiiph, kali, ivan, elijah
-* Difficulty: Medium to hard
-* Skills: Python
-
-### Add support for obfsproxy to Bitmask client
-
-After obfsproxy support is added to the platform, it needs to be enabled in the client.
-
-* Contact: chiiph, ivan, kali
+* Contact: ivan, kali, ivan, elijah
* Difficulty: Easy
* Skills: Python
@@ -285,22 +277,24 @@ After obfsproxy support is added to the platform, it needs to be enabled in the
LEAP Platform
===========================
-Soledad
+Soledad Server
---------------------------
### Add support for quota
Soledad server only handles authentication and basic interaction for sync, it would be good to have a way to limit the quota each user has to use and enforce it through the server.
-* Contact: chiiph, drebs
-* Difficulty: Medium to hard
+* Contact: ivan, drebs
+* Priority: Medium
+* Difficulty: Medium
* Skills: Python
### Add support for easier soledad server deployment
Currently Soledad relies on a fairly complex CouchDB setup. It can be deployed with just one CouchDB instance, but may be if you are just using one instance you might be good enough with SQLite or other easy to setup storage methods. The same applies to authentication, may be you want a handful of users to be able to use your Soledad sever, in which case something like certificate client authentication might be enough. So it would be good to support these non-scalable options for deploying a Soledad server.
-* Contact: chiiph, drebs
+* Contact: ivan, drebs
+* Priority: Low
* Difficulty: Medium
* Skills: Python
@@ -308,13 +302,14 @@ Currently Soledad relies on a fairly complex CouchDB setup. It can be deployed w
Bootstrapping Soledad and being able to sync with it is not a necessarily easy task, you need to take care of auth and other values like server, port, user id. Having an easy to use command line interface application that can interact with Soledad would ease testing both on the client as on the server.
-* Contact: chiiph, drebs
-* Difficulty: Easy to medium
+* Contact: ivan, drebs
+* Priority: Low
+* Difficulty: Easy
* SKills: Python
### Federated Soledad
-Currently, each user's Soledad database is their own and no one else ever has access. It would be mighty useful to allow two or more users to share a Solidad database.
+Currently, each user's Soledad database is their own and no one else ever has access. It would be mighty useful to allow two or more users to share a Solidad database. This would allow us to use Soledad for a shared calendar, for example.
* Contact: drebs, elijah
* Difficult: Hard
@@ -353,26 +348,24 @@ OpenVPN
Currently, OpenVPN gets configured to use a non-ECC DH cipher with perfect forward secrecy, but it would be nice to get it working with an Elliptical Curve Cipher. This greatly reduces the CPU load of the OpenVPN gateway.
* Contact: elijah, varac
-* Difficulty: Medium
+* Priority: Low
+* Difficulty: Low
* Skills: OpenVPN, X.509
-### Add support for obfsproxy to the platform
-
-Sometimes OpenVPN will be blocked by firewalls or governments if the protocol is detected. Obfsproxy 3 is the most advanced tool available for circumventing this detection. Obfsproxy was concieved as a tool to reach the Tor network, but it can be used for other protocols too. We want to have the ability to use this for our Encrypted Internet solution. For more information, see [OpenVPN and Obfsproxy howto guide](http://www.dlshad.net/?p=135) and the [Obfsproxy project page](https://www.torproject.org/projects/obfsproxy.html.en).
-
-* Contact: varac, elijah
-* Difficulty: Easy
-* Skills: OpenVPN, Linux, networking
-
Email
--------------------------
### Mailing list support
-Adapt the PSELS mailing list for use with the LEAP platform. PSELS uses OpenPGP in a novel way to achieve proxy re-encryption, allowing for a mailing list in which the server does not ever have access to messages in cleartext, but subscribers don't need to encrypt each message to the public key of all subscribers. For more information, read the [paper](http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/people/hkhurana/ICICS.pdf).
+Managing an encrypted mailing list is too difficult for most users. Even worse, existing solutions store a private key for the list on the server. It would be very useful to have a simple, end-to-end encrypted mailing list system that anyone could use.
+
+Our idea is a simple API that allows the client to query the subscriber list and set a new subscriber list. This command would include the addresses that should be subscribed to the list, and the full fingerprint of the key to use for each address. So long as this command was signed by a subscriber's private key, the list server accepts the new subscriber list. As an next iteration, the software could support the ability to designate that only "admins" have this ability. The client application would then include a simple form for modifying the list of subscribers. There would be no archives and no web interface.
+
+Another possibility is something like, [PSELS](http://www.ncsa.illinois.edu/people/hkhurana/ICICS.pdf). PSELS uses OpenPGP in a novel way to achieve proxy re-encryption, allowing for a mailing list in which the server does not ever have access to messages in cleartext, but subscribers don't need to encrypt each message to the public key of all subscribers. However, the setup is incredibly complex, and requires special keys.
* Contact: elijah
-* Difficulty: Extremely hard
+* Priority: Medium
+* Difficulty: Hard
* Skills: Cryptography, Python
@@ -390,7 +383,7 @@ The webapp has a payment infrastructure setup (Braintree), but it only supports
Sometimes simple push notifications aren't enough, you may want to mail a newsletter to your users or more descriptive notifications, it should be possible for an administrator of a provider to use the webapp to quickly send mail to all its users.
-* Contact: chiiph, azul, elijah
+* Contact: jessi, azul, elijah
* Difficulty: Easy
### Add support for quota
@@ -407,6 +400,5 @@ Description: Once the Soledad server quota enforcement code is in place, it woul
The idea is to allow or require tokens in the signup process. These tokens might allow to claim a particular username, give you a credit when you sign up, allow you to sign up, etc.
* Contact: azul, jessi, elijah
-* Difficulty: Easy to medium
+* Difficulty: Easy
* Skills: Ruby and Javascript
-