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GSOC/GSOC ProjectIdeas
Welcome to the 2020 SPDX Google Summer of Code Project Page
See the proposal template if you are interested in submitting a Google Summer of Code proposal.
Should you have questions please do not hesitate to contact one of the mentors directly.
Contents
What is SPDX ?
First and foremost we are a community dedicated to solving the issues and problems around Open Source licensing and compliance. The SPDX work group (part of the Linux Foundation) consists of individuals, community members, and representatives from companies, foundations and organizations who use or are considering using the SPDX standard. The work group operates much like a meritocratic, consensus-based community project; that is, anyone with an interest in the project can join the community, contribute to the specification, and participate in the decision-making process. We come from many different backgrounds including open source developers, lawyers, consultants and business professionals, many of who have been involved with license compliance and identification for years.
As part of this effort we have developed a set of collateral that can be used:
- License List and Short Identifiers
- SPDX Specification for generating SPDX Documents in multiple formats
- A set of basic tools for working with SPDX Documents
- License Identifiers in source
Why choose an SPDX Project?
Contributing to one of the SPDX projects below will provide a valuable contribution to developers and/or users of open source software. We believe you will find the projects both technically challenging and rewarding. In essence we believe you will be able to look back one day and I say I was part of that effort.
Getting Involved
Beyond working with your mentor(s) we highly encourage students who select one of these projects to get involved with the SPDX community via our technical working group. Interaction with the technical team is primarily done via its mailing list and on gitter (see resources). There is however a weekly call you could join as well. .
Resources
Proposed 2020 Projects
Mentors: please fill out the following template for any projects you wish to propose.
=== Project Name === add overview of project here ====Skills Needed==== what skills should the student have to do the coding exercises ====Background Information==== context for the project and references to be studied ====Available Mentors==== list individuals who are willing to mentor and provide information about the project proposal.
(The projects from last year can be found on the 2019 Google Summer of Code projects page for SPDX ).
SPDX Workgroup Tooling Projects
These projects are aimed at contributing to the SPDX tools to help reduce the effort to create SPDX documents and increase the accuracy of them.
Implement SPDX License Matching in Python
Implement as much of the SPDX License Matching Guidelines as practical in Python. This could replace the current Java implementation for the Check License SPDX Online license checking tool.
Following is a list of suggested features:
- Provide an interface which will check text against a license template using the license matching guidelines
- Provide an interface which will check text and return all matching SPDX listed license ID's
- Provide an interface which takes 2 license texts as input and returns a boolean indicating if the 2 licenses match per the license matching guidelines
- When there is not a match, provide a return value making it possible to describe where and why the license does not match
Background Information
- See the SPDX License Matching Guidelines for a description of the guidelines
- A technical description of the templates and license matching can be found in Appendix II of the SPDX specification
- A Java implementation can be found in Github SPDX Tools LicenseCompareHelper.java
- It's harder than you may think - the template language is a challenge to implement. Performance can be a challenge when matching a single text against hundreds of potential licenses. Reporting back where the missmatch occurs can also be a challenge.
Skills Needed
- Development skills in the Python
- Skills in parsing and pattern matching
- Ability to work with the user community in refining requirements
Available Mentors
SPDX Specification Projects
The following projects contribute directly to the creation or validation of the SPDX 2.1 specification.
SPDX Specification Views for legal counsels and developers
The proposal is to see if it possible to deduct large SPDX documents into a small subset SPDX document providing a specific reduced "views" on larger data.
Skills Needed
- Understanding of compliance needs of legal counsels and developers so we can remove friction to adopt SPDX
Background Information
SPDX documents commonly contain 100s, if not 1000s of entries making it hard for a human to make manual corrections or draw conclusions. No scanner can provide 100% complete data human corrections are usual needed. The aim from this proposal is twofold: 1. Enable developers with a "code view" of tool-generated SPDX document close to the code they work on to enable them to make corrections to the SPDX data. For instance amend SPDX package tag values or model package dependencies not detected by used scanner. 2. Provide legal counsels with a "package and limited file view" to enable legal conclusions
