Hack call: 14:00 UTC
- GSoC21:
- Contact from potential students:
- 19 students contacted us
- 2 have explicitly given up for 2021 (but may join team anyway)
- 7 have abandoned de-facto (No sign of life in 8days-1 month)
- 5 have sent both draft proposals and application tasks (MR)
- 4 have sent either the proposal or the MR or have promised to do so.
- students on various distros, we refreshed the freedombox image to bullseye
- Proposed criteria:
- x2 capability of understanding, doing research and structuring ideas
- x2 coding, MRs
- x1 proactivity, initiative
- x1 ability to pick up and engage in team procedures
- x1 communication
- x1 "vibe" from them
- Evaluation
Main wiki page: https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TODO/GSoC2021
Google's criteria: https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/selecting-a-student
- consider proposal and remaining communication separately
- each category has a score of 0 thru 9 (differently weighted)
- review after scoring that the scoring criteria made sense
- Deadlines
- final proposal: submissions open until Tuesday, 18:00 UTC
- MR: must be finalized by the proposal deadline
- scores by Wednesday 18:00 UTC
- final decision call - fioddor to set time 14:00 UTC
- ranking should be communicated by Friday 16th
- Requirements of MR and proposal
- uses freedombox module API to install the packages (nullmailer or msmtp)
- admin can configure mta-like service for sending notifications
- modules can send mail using python function provided
- documentation for module configuration and use
- No WebUI required
- Not required to be a fully functional module (some students joined late)
- The format of the proposal is "open" - there is no reason to restrict yourself to a particular structure.
- We will not be able to provide feedback for every submission. Students should proactively ask their mentors. Don't wait for mentors to contact you first.
- We hope to have 2+ GSoC students next year (this requires 5-6 mentors), thanks fioddor!
- Contact from potential students:
- Tips for first time Mumble users
- Mumble is best optimized for headsets
- Run audio wizard before meeting. It is also safe to run the wizard during the meeting
- Use "push to talk" or inline microphone control to reduce noise injection into the room while you are idle but others are trying to speak
- Desktop client, how to use the "push-to-talk" function:
- change transmission mode to "push-to-talk" and bring up the push-to-talk dialog (find it in settings)
- click the toolbar icon to unmute yourself (others won't hear you if this button showed "muted")
- hold the push-to-talk button to talk
- Desktop: in continuous-transmission mode, you can still mute yourself by clicking the "microphone" toolbar button
- Kotlin:
solved https://salsa.debian.org/java-team/kotlin/-/issues/8 🎉
ongoing https://salsa.debian.org/java-team/kotlin/-/issues/9
- once it can self-build, leave to android-tools-team to finish off upload
- java: appear to be classes that exist in multiple source packages
FreedomBox architecture question
- Tasks queues / long-running tasks (we don't have a fine-grained API)
- We start a separate thread independent from the HTTP request/WebUI. User can refresh the page manually to see progress.
We need to support NoScript environments
- Applications for task queue API: progress tracking of backup jobs, configuration scripts, etc.
- Nextcloud:
- installer helper package, but then can slowly package the missing dependencies
FreedomBox email server architecture question
- We want to make the MTA interface generic.
- See e.g. mediawiki/ikiwiki modules vs. just "wiki"
- Opinion 1: To have a generic interface we need to define stable APIs. Currently we let module developers propose their implementations. Code sharing between Postfix and Exim can be difficult. (Maybe we can have a dependency/conflict mechanism, limited public API and code sharing)
- coturn: an example of shared component without being global like letsencrypt
In Exim4 the configuration language is complicated. For security, use a limited (context-free) subset, a simplified parser, separate config files for FreedomBox and sysadmin
- Postfix uses a "key-value" configuration language
- Matrix Synapse
https://salsa.debian.org/matrix-team/matrix-synapse/-/blob/debian/buster-backports/debian/NEWS#L1
- backports no longer getting security updates, fasttrack used for buster
- needs pins and unattended upgrades
- in hard freeze until possibly June, so user communication now
- targetted 21.4.3 release for this (20 day delay) due to security impact