CommunityBridge/CommunityBridge ProjectIdeas

Welcome to the 2020 SPDX Community Bridge Project Ideas Page

Proposals can use the Google Summer of Code proposal template as a general guide for community bridge projects.

Should you have questions please do not hesitate to contact one of the mentors directly.

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

• SPDX website
• SPDX Specification
• SPDX Workgroup Tools webpage
• SPDX tech mailing list
• SPDX Git Repository

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. 

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.

Replace Java Functions in the SPDX Online Tools with Python Library Functions

Improve the performance and reliability of the SPDX Online Tools by replacing functions implemented in Java with native Python implementations.

Skills Needed

• Development skills in the Python
• Based understanding of Java
• Development skills in Django
• Ability to work with the community in integrating results with other projects

Background Information

The Python Tools library can be used but will need to be extended and improved to replace the features. The Java implementations can be found in the SPDX Java tools implementation

Available Mentors

TBD

Improve the Python Libraries

The Python Libraries need to be updated to the SPDX 2.2 spec and there are several issues outstanding.

Skills Needed

• Development skills in the Python
• Ability to work with the community in integrating results with other projects

Background Information

See the SPDX Python Tools Issues List for more information.

Available Mentors

TBD

Improve the Deployment Infrastructure for the SPDX Online Tools

Improve the reliability, security and deployability of the SPDX online tools including container management, deployment testing and monitoring.

Skills Needed

• Development skills in Python and Django
• Experience with containers
• Understanding of software as a service deployment

Background Information

The current SPDX online tools is deployed manually on an Amazon AWS EC2 Linux instance. The current process is error prone and labor intensive. We would like to move to a more automated and reliable mechanism. There is a variety of possible deployment architectures including a container based approach using Kubernetes.

Available Mentors

Gary O'Neall TBD

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 community in integrating results with other projects

Available Mentors

Rohit Lodha Gary O'Neall