[ecf-dev] ECF-related project proposals for Google Summer of Code 2010

[Scott Lewis <slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks,

ECF is again very fortunate to several excellent proposals for Google 
Summer of Code projects.

Previous Google SOC projects have been responsible for a lot of 
innovative work from ECF...e.g. ShareCode, Real-Time Shared Editing, 
Bittorrent provider, REST API, SIP provider, Google services support and 
others.  More importantly, it's resulted in many excellent committers 
coming on and contributing substantially to ECF over the past few years.

Below is a listing of the ECF-related projects that have been proposed 
for 2010.  As the ECF project lead I'm willing to mentor as many of 
these as I can, but my own time is somewhat limited, and I would like to 
have all of these efforts supported as broadly as possible (i.e. by/with 
other committers, other contributors and other ECF community members).  
I'm extremely excited about all of them and hope that all of them are 
accepted for Google SOC 2010.  Even if not are all accepted for gsoc, I 
hope that the effort goes forward anyway as I think all of them will 
result in great things for the ECF community.

If you are an ECF committer and willing to be a mentor (and/or co-mentor 
with me or someone else), please consider becoming a mentor right 
away...which is done here:

http://socghop.appspot.com/

Once you have approved for becoming a mentor, you can view, review, rate 
the proposals listed below...and offer to mentor/co-mentor any one of 
them.  Please do so if you can, and it will reduce the burden on 
everyone.  Even if you don't wish to be a formal mentor, I welcome 
everyone's support for these projects.

Thanks,

Scott

Google Data Protocol Provider for ECF - Upul Abayagunawardhana
http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_proposal/review/google/gsoc2010/upuliroshan/t127083337994
The GData protocol is used by a number of Google services, and having an 
ECF provider for GData will open up the easy creation of many ECF 
providers that can access/communicate via those services.

DNS-SD based wide-area ECF discovery provider - Markus Kuppe
http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_proposal/review/google/gsoc2010/mkuppe/t127038986619
This is a very important addition to the ECF discovery API and ECF 
remote services, as DNS-SD provides a standard way to do WAN-based 
service discovery.

Google Buzz Provider
http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_proposal/review/google/gsoc2010/tommys/t127076172827 
- Tommy Schaubs
http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_proposal/review/google/gsoc2010/nuwansam/t127078019528 
- nuwan samarasekera
Google Buzz is a very exciting new service, and an ECF-based Google Buzz 
provider will allow Google Buzz interaction from OSGi servers, RCP apps, 
and the Eclipse IDE.  Tommy and Nuwan have *both* proposed distinct 
projects, and have agreed to work together (and with the community) to 
complete distinct parts of a Google Buzz provider, and thus I hope that 
if both of these projects move forward the ECF community will have a 
high quality Google Buzz provider very quickly.

Google Wave Provider - Sebastian Schmidt
http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_proposal/review/google/gsoc2010/sebs/t127051627183
The Google Wave provider enhancement is/has been on the ECF plan for 
many months now, and having a gsoc project to help out with completion 
will be a very important positive step.  
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=280347

Restlet API integration with Equinox - Rajeev Sampath
http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/student_proposal/review/google/gsoc2010/rajeevs/t127081372469
This project is associated with Equinox rather than with ECF, but it 
is/will be an important element in creating ECF *server-side* support 
for REST-based remote services.  I (Scott) have been communicating with 
the proposal author, and if there is sufficient time, Rajeev has 
expressed interest in using the Restlet API to create an ECF remote 
service provider with the Restlet API (previously integrated with 
Equinox).  This may end up being something that is done after the soc 
project, but even so, having the Restlet API available will make the 
construction of an ECF REST-based remote services *service host* 
provider very very easy, and so having the Restlet API integrated with 
Equinox will go a long way to making this happen.