Projects and proposals
| Projects and proposals +/- | |
| Content ideas | Content projects |
| Hardware ideas | Hardware projects |
| Software ideas | Software projects |
There are many projects and proposals underway associated with OLPC. Active projects, and other ideas, can be found via the links in the sidebar to the right.
From: http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-May/013696.html and http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-May/005980.html
I'll list a grab bag of project ideas in this email. Some of these are high priority, some are low, some have OLPC people working on them, some do not. The list is certainly not complete! Please respond to this email to list things I've left out or projects you're currently exploring, or to express interest. I've tried to list some email addresses by each idea of OLPC folk who are interested or could give more information.
(Help wiki-fying this list would be appreciated! See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Projects_and_proposals )
cscott (cscott at cscott.net)
PROJECTS, IN THE ORDER THEY POPPED INTO MY HEAD:
Sugar Labs
See also http://sugarlabs.org/go/ActivityTeam/ProjectIdeas, and http://sugarlabs.org/go/DevelopmentTeam/ProjectIdeas.
Bug activity
There should be an activity on the XO which makes it easier to submit a bug into OLPC's trac system. It should collect information about installed activities, activity versions, and the core OS version so the submitter doesn't have to, and make it as easy as possible to submit a quality bug report.
- Bug Buddy, https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/bug-buddy, is installed on the gnome-session side of SoaS on Fedora 10. It may be a place to start.
Spanish wikipedia slice activity (cjb at laptop.org)
Wiki textbooks. (sj at laptop.org)
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Read
- Collaborative PDF annotation might be a good start.
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/MikMik (mako at atdot.cc)
Physics-learning games (like Phun and Elements)
School server management tools (martin at laptop.org)
Class management tools
- Journal does auto-hand-in for assignments downloaded from Moodle.
- Realtime collaborative classroom tool - teacher runs presentation, asks questions, everyone types/draws answers, teacher can choose (randomly or deliberately) an answer to continue discussion, or set up subgroups (pairs) to respond to each other's answers.
- Formal exam/test tool.
Hunger project
Testing tools. (mstone at laptop.org)
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activity_Testing_Project
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Schoolserver_Testing
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Tinderbox_Testing
- (see also, "Build servers" below)
Build servers.
- http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/5279
- http://buildbot.net/trac
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pilgrim
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Building_custom_images
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Puritan
Docs to go w/ builds:
- http://dev.laptop.org/~cscott/joyride-1477-api/
- http://dev.laptop.org/~cscott/joyride-1477-api/epydoc.py
- http://dev.laptop.org/~cscott/joyride-1477-api/epydoc.config
- http://epydoc.sourceforge.net/
- http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/4132
Remote debugging:
Blogging platforms on XO
Email app
(Gmail, or lightweight local email)
Flashcards for the classroom.
(Make own flashcards on the XO)
Geography browser / quiz.
(Make own maps on the XO)
Edubuntu integration
(sugar chooser for edubuntu, edubuntu activities for XO)
KDE edutainment integration / ports
Other Education software:
Translations/localization (sayamindu at gmail.com)
- https://dev.laptop.org/translate/
- Also, integrating a "translate this" feature into the UI, or mouse-over translations using a small local dictionary.
Filesystems (cscott at laptop.org)
IPv6 tunnel endpoints (cscott at laptop.org)
Private Dynamic DNS for out-of-school uses of XO
Activity upgrade activity (cscott at laptop.org)
Key Manager activity (cscott at laptop.org)
Network manager maintainer. (dennis at laptop.org, cscott at laptop.org)
- OLPC has deployment-specific hacks in NetworkManager; these need to be ported to FC9 Network Manager and/or reimplemented in a more general manner.
Initscripts work. (dennis at laptop.org, cscott at laptop.org)
We need to boot fast & start X sooner!
Kernel power-management work (dilinger at laptop.org, dwmw2 at infradead.org, cjb at laptop.org)
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Power_management
- http://www.linuxsymposium.org/2007/view_abstract.php?content_key=264
- http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Sleepy_Linux
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Apr_3-4_Mini-conference
Python performance tuning (sugar)
"How to use your new XO" activity (adam at laptop.org)
- Large # of our support tickets are basic "how do I use this thing" issues
Emulators
- Create/maintain builds designed to easy to install & run in emulators qemu, vmware, etc
- Mexico (and other deployments) are doing teacher training in emulators, because they don't want to divert any XOs from the kids
- Developers who don't have an XO also like to use emulators.
Android Emulator
- Not for developing, but for installing the thousands of Apps that are available in the Android ecosystem.
- There are literally thousands of free educational apps that are available to Android users.
Printer support (big scope!)
Security work (mstone at laptop.org)
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Bitfrost
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Rainbow
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Apr_3-4_Mini-conference
Child-safe web filtering on XO
Regardless of its merits, CIPA requires it for XO deployments in US schools:
Kid-friendly Python IDE
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Pippy
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Develop
- http://dev.laptop.org/git?p=users/cscott/icon-draw-activity
Collaboration via Multi-pointer X (MPX)
Help updating/translating the Sugar FLOSS Manual
and the FLOSS Manuals for Sugar Activities
- http://en.flossmanuals.net/write_activity
- http://en.flossmanuals.net/terminal
- http://en.flossmanuals.net/chat
- http://en.flossmanuals.net/browse
- http://en.flossmanuals.net/record
- http://en.flossmanuals.net/turtleart
Unsorted
Some ideas for projects which a group could own long(er)-term:
- Care & nourishment of the Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora packaging of Sugar
- maintaining a Sugar live cd and/or
- maintaining a one-click-install Windows emulator of Sugar for groups interesting in exploring Sugar or teacher training
- a research fork investigating gestures for Sugar
- a research group to tackle the best approaches for emulating keyboards on a touchscreen
- research projects in collaboration or mesh technologies (http://open80211s.org/ and http://wiki.funkfeuer.at/ are good focal points for such work)
- someone to revive/review alternate flash filesystems for the XO
- care & feeding of adobe flash bundles for the XO
- care & feeding of gnash on the XO (keeping us up to date, liasoning between community content and gnash developers)
- similar work for patent-encumbered codecs (helps if you're outside the US)
- care & feeding of Ogg and media on the XO (assembling good demos, optimizing encoder/decoder performance)
- a research group on sound/video editing for kids
- a research group to improve interoperability with non-Sugarized applications
- someone to investigate alternate window managers for Sugar
- someone to investigate Xinerama suport in Sugar, in anticipation of eventually running Sugar across two displays in Gen 2
- a research group developing software for school management (Uruguay demonstrated a very nice database application tracking kids, XOs, theft reports, and repair history, but they had it developed under contract and the result is closed source -- it would be nice to provide an OSS alternative for other deployments).
Don't forget: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developer_program