[Systers-dev] Student projects for systers code

[Kathy Richardson]

Hi everyone,

I'm working with Robin and Jen on getting students to work on 
systers-mailman through the Google Summer of Code - open source 
development sponsored by Google.

Our application is due Friday at 4PM.

We need help listing and describing a set of projects that we would like 
to have students tackle this summer.  I'm looking for any feedback and 
comments that you all have.


I'm new to systers-dev, so I don't have all the details.  I think that 
some of the projects from last year are still on the wish list.  Please 
let me/list know which ones are still valid, and what we need to add.

Thanks!

-Kathy

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  Database Abstractions

The Systers mailing list relies on a number of customized additions to 
stock Mailman. These features make use of a PostgreSQL database. 
Currently the database is accessed via raw SQL statements and python 
db-api. This hurts maintainability, and also ties the code to the 
database. We would like to convert this to use an ORM (object-relational 
mapper).
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Using Mailman Authentication to Access Other Applications

Systers would like to use the mailing list membership info and password 
to access other resources. The work in this area would be either to 
adapt OpenLDAP to use the mailing list membership information as a data 
source, or to write an OpenID provider web service. These authentication 
systems have the most support, and will provide Systers with the most 
flexibility in choosing CMS, wiki, or other software needing authentication.
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Improve Mailman Archive Access/Searching

Mailman archives are really bad. Searching for a particular message is 
sometimes easier via Google, rather than Mailman's native interface. 
This project would seek to enhance the archives to be more useful to the 
list participants – better search options, member info & statistics, 
pretty charts using Google APIs and SVG graphics. This also would be 
eligible for eventual mainline Mailman adoption.

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Fixing and implementing wishlists items for existing features

Systers uses a heavily-customized version of GNU Mailman. A number of 
additional small features are desired to improve things further. Please 
see: the issue list, including wishlist items.

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Porting to Mailman 3.0    - Heard this is getting close to being ready....

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