[tahoe-dev] Google Summer of Code chooses to sponsor Tahoe-LAFS!

[Zooko O'Whielacronx]

Folks:

I've just added an idea to the GSoCIdeas page: a Firefox plugin using
the new Jetpack SDK!

http://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/GSoCIdeas

If you are a student interested in GSoC, now is the time to contact
the Mentors listed on the GSoCIdeas page and let us know. You have
less than a week to turn in your project proposal to Google to be
considered for funding this summer. Six students have contacted us so
far and we are helping each of them update their proposals. (If you
are one of those six and you haven't heard from us in a few days, I
apologize. Please write to us again and send us your current draft of
your project proposal.)

If you are also one of the six students you should feel free to change
your project proposal to the Firefox Plugin one if that tickles your
fancy more than your current proposal does.

Regards,

Zooko

== Firefox Plugin ==

Implement a plugin for Firefox using the new
[https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/ Jetpack SDK]. This plugin will
extend Firefox so that it knows about Tahoe-LAFS caps. It will provide
user-friendly and safe gestures to share caps, for example, it will
require a different gesture to share a write-cap than to share a
read-cap, to prevent people from accidentally sharing a write-cap to a
file or directory when they meant to share a read-cap, thus solving
one of the major outstanding problems in Tahoe-LAFS user interface
(see [http://allmydata.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2010-March/004139.html
this tahoe-dev mailing list discussion]).

It will also provide a fast, pretty, and highly usable browser for
exploring and manipulating a Tahoe-LAFS filesystem.

It will also provide a re-usable Jetpack component which makes it easy
for other plugin developers to add Tahoe-LAFS features to their
Firefox plugin.

It may also provide more features for Firefox users or developers,
which features may be discovered during the course of the summer.

Brian Warner, the most prolific contributor to the Tahoe-LAFS codebase
and one of the leaders of the Tahoe-LAFS project and a Tahoe-LAFS GSoC
Mentor is also an employee of Mozilla Labs who works on the Jetpack
SDK full-time, so he would be an excellent Mentor for any student
interested in this project.