ideas list

List of suggested tasks/ideas for the the Free Software Camp. Please add your ideas below.

Ideas with mentors

Technical Topics

Non-Technical Topics

Debian Packaging - Sruthi Chandran

Learn how to create debian package and package some software not yet available in the debian archive.

System Administration - Pirate Praveen, Akhil, Bady, Tanzeem

Help maintain Free Software powered services for public (volunteer to maintain poddery.com, diasp.in, codema.in, lists.fsci.in, videos.fsci.in).

Server basics (we will teach you): switching users (sudo, su), ssh key based authentication (scp, rsync, custom ssh port, mosh), software raid, encrypted partitions (using virtual machines), firewall with ufw, postgresql replication, lxc container (setup services on your local machine), sharing passwords with gpg encrypted files, nginx basic, screen/tmux/nohup

Tracks/services: diaspora, loomio, synapse, mailman, peertube

Pre-Requisites: How to install GNU/Linux, Familiarity with Command Line, disk partitioning with logical volume manager, authenticating with ssh keys

Hugo (Static Site Generator) - Sai Karthik

Mentoring to create a hugo site for privacyyathra.in Explain Free Software based and federated communication services as a way to reclaiming privacy to general public. Why? What tools? How to use them?

Elisa (Music Player) - Nikunj Goyal

Mentoring to search out for bugs in elisa music player by kde and improve the overall software to compete with other similar software on web.

Improve KDE input method setup (ibus) — Rajeesh

GNOME3 has excellent support for enabling Indic language input. Setting up ibus for inputting Indic languages in KDE involves manual fiddling. Develop a better integration.

Prerequisites: C++/Qt, ibus.

Improve FontForge’s OpenType feature file handling — Rajeesh

Improve https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge/pull/4097

Prerequisites: C, fea syntax.

Develop a traditional script Malayalam font — Rajeesh

Create a new Malayalam Unicode font.

Prerequisites: Vector drawing.

Fedora packaging — Rajeesh

Learn packaging guidelines for Fedora and maintain packages.

Prerequisites: Enthusiasm.

Port diaspora to rails 6 - Aboobacker MK and Pirate Praveen

Currently diaspora is using rails 5 and we should port the diaspora rails code to use rails 6.

Prerequisites: Ruby and Ruby on Rails

Varnam Project - Subin

Varnam is a cross-platform tool for typing Indian languages using transliteration. It's a FOSS alternative to Google Input Tools.

Project Repositories : https://github.com/varnamproject

If you have any questions, ping me.

New website

Need to migrate varnamproject.com to a Hugo site. Some work has been done on this: https://github.com/thetronjohnson/varnam

Prerequisites: Experience with content management would be nice, HTML+CSS (web development) experience would also be nice (not necessary though).

Windows Maintainer

Make Varnam Desktop app & Input Method Engine work on Windows operating systems.

Prerequisites: Experience in Windows desktop app development, Visual Studio

Language Maintainers

Need to collect words and make word frequency corpus of different Indian languages. Sample word frequency list (in Malayalam) : https://kde.smc.org.in:8123/packs/ml/ml-basic/ml-basic-1/download
Need to make English -> Indic Language word pair dictionary. Sample (in Malayalam) :

civil സിവിൽ
director ഡയറക്ടർ
firefox ഫയർഫോക്സ്

Languages ordered by priority (according to userbase of Varnam) : Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi. More languages are supported : https://api.varnamproject.com/languages

Making a language pack for Varnam

Prerequisites: Some experience with website crawling, data collection, know the language

Indic Keyboard - Akshay, Jishnu (co-mentor)

Indic Keyboard is a MOSS award winning, privacy aware, versatile keyboard for Android with 23 languages and 57 layouts. It is based on AOSP keyboard with various additional features in the java codebase. Contribution opportunities include:

adding new layouts / fixing bugs in layouts
adding new features / fixing bugs in features
extending features for new use cases
documentation
...

https://gitlab.com/indicproject/indic-keyboard/-/issues has many ideas and bug reports.

Self-driven learning and inquisitiveness are qualities that maybe helpful in being able to productively contribute.

WordPress Deployment in LAMP Stack - Arun Kumar Pariyar

Help build your first Website built with WordPress in a VPS/server.

Install and setup LAMP Stack ( Apache/MySQL/PHP).
Deploy WordPress.
Guides on how to setup your Domain.
Setup and build your first website.

Prerequisites: A machine/VPS/server with GNU/Linux.

Getting started with translating KDE software with Lokalize and other desktop based software with online translation systems. - Raghukamath

General introduction to translation workflow of KDE
How to setup Lokalize and getting started with it.
Contacting the language team and getting work upstreamed.
How to locate and join online translation systems.
Reviewing existing translation.

Prerequisites: Knowledge of target language and technical vocabulary. Familiarity with the target application and KDE software. GNU/Linux operating system.

Introduction to Free Software Creative Suite. - Raghukamath

Basic introduction to Free Software creative applications.
Multiple sessions for familiarising users basics different application for few days (Inkscape, Krita, GIMP, Blender).
Creating an artwork for promoting your favourite free software project. The artwork can also be licensed under CC-BY and add to wikimedia commons.
- Wallpapers
- Designs for Merchandise
- Icon designs etc that can go in wikimedia commons.
1 or 2 day session using Free software application in professional work, reviewing work and answering questions.

Prerequisites: Basic knowledge about art and design. GNU/Linux operating system, Graphic tablet.

Event Organisation - Anupa and Nattie

Introduction to event organisation
(potentially) Culminates in a mini-conference with talks by other projects, at the end of camp

Data Modeling using Wikidata.org - Ranjith S

Wikidata is a free and open knowledge base that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. Wikidata acts as central storage for the structured data of its Wikimedia sister projects including Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary, Wikisource, and others.

Introduction to wikidata, linked data,
How to do SPARQL query.
Create a frontend application using wikidata api to display data about various kind of items.
Incorporate wikidata api into a web application

Prerequisites: Basic knowledge about HTML and Javascript. GNU/Linux operating system, Text Editors like gedit,Kate. If you know how to host a website that is a plus. If you know python, PHP that is a plus.

CircuitVerse Contributions - Shivansh Srivastava, Pragati Verma and Mahmoud Hammad

Through this Program, We expect the participants to help us enhance the Circuitverse Platform by fixing existing bugs and testing the Simulator completely. Some beginner friendly issues are listed here.

Contributions may include:

Adding new features / Fixing bugs in existing features
Simulator Bugs Fixing
Documentation
Website Enhancements

Prerequisites : Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, HTML, CSS

Learn to setup and host free software communication tools for local communities - Sahil [sahilister], Dhanesh [dhanesh95] (co-mentor)

Basic introduction to Free Software communication platforms.
How to choose the right communication tool for your community?
Guide on how to setup a domain.
Guide on how to setup multiple tools on a single server and use web server to manage traffic.
Server hardening basics.

Pre-requisites: Willingness to learn and ability to break servers/services.

Go Dependency Generator - Nilesh Patra, Pirate Praveen

Implement a Go Dependency Generator similar to debian.fosscommunity.in (which tracks ruby dependencies) The generator should output the dependency and details of a given golang package rendering them in a nice readable webpage.

Prerequisites: Python3, HTML, CSS, Basic Golang

Getting started with contributing to OpenStreetMap

Basic introduction to OpenStreetMap.
Map the places around us using iD editor.
Translate the names in map data.
Localization of OSM components - editor and website.

Prerequisites: Basic understanding of geometry, Local language typing

The Bechdel Test: A crowd-funded movie rating web app based on Bechdel test - Ruchika, Ram

A measure of the representation of women in movies.

The movie has to have at least two women in it,
who talk to each other,
about something other than a man.

The motivation behind this project idea is to make people talk about women(or any other underrepresented gender) representations in movie. Mainly in Indian movies. Again, the above mentioned 3 rules are not ideal since they don't always fit right. We can always evolve with different test questions.

You can apply your UI/UX design, web development skills here and also learn new web frameworks on the way.

Read here for more(https://pad.disroot.org/p/r.8dd71d7233d9ac05413ecfa182d14e1b)

Malayalam translation for gnu.org articles - Aiswarya

The project aims at spreading ideas of free software philosophy among Malayalam speaking population. For details please visit https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/www-ml

We are looking for more contributors to our project. Our workflow consists of usage of git, Savannah trackers and a po file editor of your choice (https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/www-ml-gnu-malayalam-project-public/2019-09/msg00000.html).

Pre-requisites: Malayalam, reasonable knowledge in English, time and patience

Adding LibreJS friendly advertisements to searx - Sagar

Current state of searx requires the host to put money into hosting the server and is not sustainable financially. This project aims to have privacy respecting, non-user tracking random advertisements for searx. An instance host of searx will be able to enable a switch, accept and display RANDOM (no-user-tracking) ads, earn from it and atleast sustain themselves if not become rich.

Create and maintain GNU recommended template VMs for Qubes OS

Currently, Qubes OS uses Fedora and Debian primarily as template VMs for Qubes OS. To make Qubes OS even more secure, GNU recommended purer free software OS templates of trisquel, parabola, hyperbola, guix can be made for use in Qubes.

Create packages for Hyperbola OS

Hyperbola OS is moving towards HyperbolaBSD. Someone who wants to learn arch packaging or experienced in it can step in and create PKGBUILD files for creating more packages for Hyperbola OS. (In the upcoming v0.4, many of linux dependencies have been changed to bsd ones)

Ideas without mentors but general guidance can be expected

Solution to problems identified locally by using or extending available free software tools.
Campaigning on opening up closed data sets useful to public like map data collected by local bodies/government to Creative Commons or similar Open licenses.
Port diaspora tests from phantomjs to headless firefox (https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/8163)
Handwriting recognition system and input method, Decentralized Knowledge systems, Language computing related(#24)
Update active_model_serializers gem to newer release in diaspora (https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/pull/8154)

Bring your own project

The following mentors are available for help with contributing to any popular free software project that you wish to contribute to. Since there is a chance that the mentor may not be comfortable with particular projects, discuss with them in advance about whether they might be able to offer mentorship for the project you are planning to contribute to.

Akshay S Dinesh (programming, documentation) ( akshay:matrix.org )
Hitesh Kumar (programming(web development preferably), documentation) ( heroichitesh:matrix.org)
Arun Kumar Pariyar (sysadmin, web development) ( @arunpyasi:matrix.org )

More (untriaged) ideas

There are more ideas in the issue tracker under the "Ideas" label.

GitLab