commit d3e616dd0985bc54c2e8154cdb34b3ded8926967
parent 69c5c8051ee737c096b5713f45bdcbf2f47ea934
Author: arg@www.suckless.org <unknown>
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 13:57:41 +0000
update, some remarks, removed useless projects, made some project ideas less concrete, made others more concrete
Diffstat:
1 file changed, 71 insertions(+), 41 deletions(-)
diff --git a/www.suckless.org/GSoC2009.md b/www.suckless.org/GSoC2009.md
@@ -1,33 +1,36 @@
Google Summer of Code 2009
==========================
-Suckless.org is applying as a mentoring organization for [Google Summer of
-Code 2009](http://code.google.com/soc/).
+We are applying as a mentoring organization for [Google Summer of Code 2009](http://code.google.com/soc/).
Background
----------
-We are home of quality software such as dwm, dmenu, libixp, and wmii, with
+We are home of quality software such as [dwm](http://dwm.suckless.org),
+[dmenu](http://tools.suckless.org), [libixp](http://libs.suckless.org/libixp),
+[wmii](http://wmii.suckless.org) and plenty other [tools](http://tools.suckless.org), with
a focus on simplicity, clarity and frugality. Our [philosophy](/common/) is
-about keeping things simple, minimal and elitist. We believe this should become
+about keeping things simple, minimal and usable. We believe this should become
the mainstream philosophy in the IT sector. Unfortunately, the tendency for
complex, error-prone and slow software seems to be prevalent in present-day
software industry. We intend to prove the opposite with our software projects.
Our project focuses on advanced and experienced computer users. In contrast
-to the usual proprietary software world or many mainstream Free Software
+to the usual proprietary software world or many mainstream open source
projects that focus more on average and normal end users, we think that
-experienced users are mostly ignored by software projects. This is
-particularly true for user interfaces, such as graphical environments on
-desktop computers, on mobile devices, and in so-called Web applications. We
-believe that the market of experienced users is growing continously, with each user looking for more appropriate solutions for his/her work style from time to
-time.
-
-Furthermore, minimalism results in reasonable and attainable goals. While other organizations, without a driving philosophy of minimalism, may furnish unreliable
-and incomplete projects, we strive to maintain minimalism and clarity to drive development to completion.
-
-Unlike most Free Software projects, strong leadership is essential to us.
+experienced users are mostly ignored. This is particularly true for user
+interfaces, such as graphical environments on desktop computers, on mobile
+devices, and in so-called Web applications. We believe that the market of
+experienced users is growing continously, with each user looking for more
+appropriate solutions for his/her work style.
+
+Furthermore, minimalism results in reasonable and attainable goals. While other
+organizations, without a driving philosophy of minimalism, may furnish
+unreliable and incomplete projects, we strive to maintain minimalism and
+clarity to drive development to completion.
+
+Unlike most open source projects, strong leadership is essential to us.
Our projects are usually led by a single person who maintains the mainline
code repository. Users discuss, review and contribute to the project on
-[Dedicated project mailing lists and on IRC](/common/community.html).
+[dedicated project mailing lists and on IRC](/common/community).
Mentors
-------
@@ -41,7 +44,7 @@ student's progress, as well as of the mentor's.
The following persons have volunteered to serve as mentor during Google
Summer of Code 2009:
-* Anselm R. Garbe <<garbeam@gmail.com>>
+* Anselm R Garbe <<garbeam@gmail.com>>
* Szabolcs Nagy <<nszabolcs@gmail.com>>
* Tuncer Ayaz <<tuncer.ayaz@gmail.com>>
* Uriel <<uriel99@gmail.com>>
@@ -59,8 +62,8 @@ to focus on:
* Graphical user interfaces for expert users (such as more advanced
concepts for mail clients, messaging clients, music players, text editors)
-* Web applications for expert users collaborating on the GUI concepts
-* Mobile applications for expert user collaborating on the GUI concepts
+* Web applications for expert users following our GUI concepts
+* Mobile applications for expert users following our GUI concepts
* General userland enhancements to Unix-like operating systems, in particular
GNU/Linux
* Audio applications
@@ -75,30 +78,50 @@ Post your project ideas for students projects during Google Summer of Code
2009 here. See the [FAQ entry][FAQ] on the ideas list for further details.
The listed ideas generally require good knowledge of C and experience with
-Unix-like operating systems. The difficulty ranges from low to medium.
-An academical background in computer science is usually not required.
+Unix-like operating systems. The difficulty ranges from medium to high.
+An academical background in computer science is desirable but not essential.
Please consider to contact us first if you want to apply for a project, so we
can discuss the ideas at first and avoid misunderstandings in the first place.
### Unix utilities
-Although there have been several attempts to replace GNU coretutils
-on GNU/Linux by smaller counterparts, no suckless collection of fully
-POSIX-compliant utilities exits. Existing programs should be evaluated
-and reused if possible.
+Projects like [dmenu](http://tools.suckless.org/dmenu) proof that it's possible
+to bring the Unix philosophy onto the desktop and into the land of graphical
+applications. We believe that there is big potential for doing similiar things
+for other purposes as well such as managing contacts, bookmarks, browsing
+files/directories, reading/managing mails, organizing/viewing images/videos and
+listing to music, in a very elegant but Unix-like way. We believe that such tools
+should have a GUI but communicate via standard I/O and be very flexible in the
+combination of their purposes.
-### Port dwm to Microsoft Windows
+### Port dwm to different platforms
-Many dwm users who have to use Microsoft Windows regularly have proposed to
+Many dwm users who have to use Microsoft Windows regularly have requested to
port dwm to Microsoft Windows. There are several tiling window managers, but
unfortunately the majority are proprietary software and can't keep up with dwm.
+Similarly we believe that porting dwm to Mac OS X, or onto mobile devices with
+certain constraints might guide to a new paradigm of future window management
+concepts in mainstream software.
+
+There might also be the opportunity to make dwm itself more friendly with
+well-established desktop environments, to integrate well with Gnome or KDE in
+order to proof that dynamic and tiled window management should be the default
+in future window management concepts.
+
### ddm
There is no suckless display manager for X11 at the moment, thus a new
dynamic display manager (ddm) should designed and implemented.
+### stm
+
+There seems to be a need for a suckless ticket management system, as this
+is a common task in today's daily activity in business and private time
+management. This task includes the design and implementation of a suckless
+system that solves the problem of TTS, ARS and TRS all together.
+
### Comprehensive code audit
All software hosted at suckless.org should undergo a comprehensive
@@ -108,23 +131,30 @@ clean-up. The result has to be a report on all found errors and maybe some
advice for the project maintainers. This task requires experience in this
field.
-### stm
+### Lightweight volume manager alternative
-There seems to be a need for a suckless ticket management system, as this
-is a common task in today's daily activity in business and private time
-management. This task includes the design and implementation of a suckless
-system that solves the problem of TTS, ARS and TRS all together.
+We'd like to see a lightweight and simple alternative to gnome-volume-manager
+and similiar programs.
+
+### A modern C99-only compiler
+
+We'd like to see a modern C99 compiler which performs reasonable well and only
+supports C, not C++. gcc is too slow and too focused on language-agnostics and
+particularly focused on its C++ support. We got the impression that most open
+source software is written in C and makes no use of C++, so that it would be
+desirable to have a modern C99 compiler for the x86 and arm architecture.
-### Suckless programming language
+We are also concerned about recent attempts by certain parties to implement the
+C frontend for gcc in C++. We believe that is a bad decision in general (due to
+demanding C++ as bootstrapping environment) and would like to get rid from the
+gcc dependency for these reasons.
-Although sufficient, C is not a perfect programming language. It suffers from
-legacy syntax and semantics and lacks features that make designing libraries
-and developing abstractions much easier. To address these shortcomings the
-student should survey the problems of C, evaluate possible solutions and
-enhance the language.
+We'd like to see that the C99 compiler is able to build recent linux kernels as
+a test bed.
-Perhaps this is a bit utopian, but it's still worth considering. Anyhow, it
-should be possible to build a working prototype by using existing software
-for parsing and code generation.
+Due to the high difficulty we believe that this project might consist of up to
+3 students concentrating on different parts (parsing/lexing/front-end/syntax
+tree being 1 student, AST optimization/reverse engineering being another
+student and code generator being a third student).
[FAQ]: http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2009/faqs.html#0_1_ideas_5167658354380897_772
