Google Summer of Code: Project ideas and mentors

Mentors

We need your help to make GSoC 2013 a success. Do you contribute to Ubuntu? If you do, please consider becoming a mentor this summer. Go ahead and add your name to this page, and put your name beside any project ideas you would like to mentor - and feel free to add more of those, too!

Project ideas

Students: Please read our advice for students in addition to the ideas on this page. Remember, these are just suggestions! If your favourite idea isn't here, don't worry. You are welcome to use your own project idea when you submit your student application. Of course, it is a good idea to look around and find someone who would be interested in mentoring your project. Perhaps someone is offering to mentor a similar project?

Can you think of a nice project for a student to work on over the summer? Is it best achieved here in Ubuntu? Great! Go ahead and add it to this list. When adding a project idea…

• Try to explain your idea quickly. If you need more words, consider linking to another wiki page.
• Make sure your idea is understandable for someone who is new to Ubuntu development.
• If you are interested in mentoring that idea, please leave your name with the project, and in the table at the top of this page, so potential students can contact you.
• Please use the following format and add your idea to the top of the list:

  • === Project name ===
     * '''Suggested by:''' YourName (linking to your personal wiki page or your Launchpad profile).
     * '''Mentors:''' List anyone interested in mentoring the project.
     * '''Description:''' Describe the project in 80 words or less.
     * '''Resources:''' Link to helpful resources like the project home page.
    ----

Accessibility Improvements

• Suggested by: David Bensimon (komputes)

• Mentors: Bhavani Shankar (coolbhavi)

• Description: The main task is in improving Text To Speech Voices and Speech Recognition (Please see Resources link below).

• Resources: Project notes

Fontmatrix

• Suggested by: David Bensimon (komputes)

• Mentors:

• Description: Font manager. Project needs a new maintainer since 2009.

• Resources: Fontmatrix website

Twinkle SIP Client

• Suggested by: David Bensimon (komputes)

• Mentors:

• Description: Project needs a new maintainer. Twinkle is unmantained since 2009. This project tries to rescue it by asking developers to contribute to it. The main task is to migrate Twinkle from Qt3 to Qt4 and to get it back into Ubuntu's repositories. It is an extremely useful and powerful SIP client.

• Resources: Twinkle website

Ubuntu Friendly Improvements

• Suggested by: David Bensimon (komputes)

• Mentors:

• Description: Making UF more comprehensive. Attempt to build a hardware compatibility database for Ubuntu. Currently UF lists ratings on entire systems. Looking for a student who would like to add component based (USB and PCI ID based) specific compatibility pages. Please contact me if you are interested in discussing this improvement.

• Resources: Information about Ubuntu Friendly, Brainstorm page, Feature blueprint

Add feature to customize sound effects

• Suggested by: David Bensimon (komputes)

• Mentors:

• Description:

• Resources: Feature request

Nautilus: 'Remember forever' option in network login not working

• Suggested by: Timothy Arceri

• Mentors:

• Description: The fix for this will most likely include changes to GTK and GVFS. Its a good project to get a taste of the internals of the Linux desktop without being too complex

• Resources: Ubuntu Bug Report, Upstream Bug Report with much more info including hint to where to start looking at source code

Changing volume labels (disk name) in nautilus

• Suggested by: David Bensimon (komputes)

• Mentors:

• Description:

• Resources: Feature request

Copy-Paste doesn't work if the source is closed before the paste

• Suggested by: David Bensimon (komputes)

• Mentors:

• Description: The clipboard deletes content in the clipboard when quitting the source program. This means Copy -> Quit -> (Can't Paste). Still affects LibreOffice and GTK+.

• Resources: Feature request

Error tracker improvements

• Suggested by: Evan Dandrea (ev)

• Mentors: Evan Dandrea

• Description: Improve our error collection and investigative tools.

• Resources: Ideas page

Bring the Ubuntu Accomplishment system to the next level

• Suggested by: Javier Lopez (chilicuil)

• Mentors:

• Description: Improve the UAS so it can become a default application and the default way to start contributing to Ubuntu. Give it more 'game' features.

• Resources: Project wiki

Uncork application-level gestures with the GINN project

• Suggested by: Stephen M. Webb

• Mentors: Stephen M. Webb

• Description: Bring modern touchscreen input to legacy applications.

• Resources: https://launchpad.net/ginn