Mozilla funding opportunity for Mailman work
Hi Cabal. I'm sorry that I've neglected Mailman so much for the past several months; I've just registered for PyCon 2016 and will be ramping up my participation especially leading up to that.
Mozilla https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/10/23/mozilla-launches-open-source-su pport-program/ has just announced that it wants to "identify up to 10 projects we rely on and can fund in a thoughtful, meaningful way by December 12th". They use Mailman and if we can identify useful ways they can spend that money to advance Mailman's development and usefulness to them (e.g., paying for someone's time to get packaging or localization to a better state), I'd be happy to take point on organizing that proposal.
Again, regrets on my absence.
Sumana Harihareswara http://brainwane.net
On Oct 26, 2015, at 11:04 AM, Sumana Harihareswara wrote:
Mozilla https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/10/23/mozilla-launches-open-source-su pport-program/ has just announced that it wants to "identify up to 10 projects we rely on and can fund in a thoughtful, meaningful way by December 12th". They use Mailman and if we can identify useful ways they can spend that money to advance Mailman's development and usefulness to them (e.g., paying for someone's time to get packaging or localization to a better state), I'd be happy to take point on organizing that proposal.
I noticed that Mailman is on their list, although they haven't identified a Mozilla contact person for us:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/MOSS/Projects_in_use_by_Mozilla
I think it would be very interesting for us to apply, although I'd like to know what they are interested in getting out of Mailman (presumably v3). What would *we* like to do that we can't do because of resources?
Ideas very welcome.
Cheers, -Barry
Barry Warsaw writes:
What would *we* like to do that we can't do because of resources?
That's where I'm blocked. I can't honestly put myself up as a money-sink: I wouldn't mind getting paid for my effort, but I wouldn't put in any less effort just because I'm unpaid. ;-)
Hm ... maybe generalizing Andrew's authn/authz stuff? Mozilla would probably like improved Persona support? Andrew would be good for that and ISTR he's a freelancer.
I wouldn't mind compensating a student even if she/he would do the work for free anyway. But except for Abhilash, I can't recommend any recent student for a project I think is valuable enough to request such resources without at the same time volunteering to mentor intensively. Not enough experience, and the project I have in mind is not an extension of any GSoC project. And I can't really volunteer at this point.
As for Abhilash himself, I think he should concentrate on his graduate studies. There's no problem with him volunteering the occasional half-day to Mailman, but I've seen far too many students seriously hindered in getting the most out of their graduate study by committing to consulting work. I won't oppose him if he wants to do something, but I won't nominate him. (@Abhilash: If you decide to apply against my advice, it's just advice. I'll be happy to support you to the extent I can in your Mailman work or your graduate study, whatever you want to do -- though I suspect I'd be useless in the latter role. ;-)
If somebody else is willing to mentor *my* suggestions: there are a couple of new proposals for DMARC mitigation out there. I would be willing to evaluate them (in the remaining hours) for use in Mailman. Why "evaluate"? As most of you probably know, message signing and signature validation are normally considered MTA functions, and Mailman needn't/shouldn't try to duplicate that functionality. However, with experimental protocols, of course they won't be in production MTAs for a while, so it *might* be worthwhile to offer support in Mailman as a spur/temporary workaround while the MTAs implement the new protocols.
I don't (yet) have a developer to recommend, though.
Steve
On 10/27/2015 09:30 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
Barry Warsaw writes:
What would *we* like to do that we can't do because of resources?
That's where I'm blocked. I can't honestly put myself up as a money-sink: I wouldn't mind getting paid for my effort, but I wouldn't put in any less effort just because I'm unpaid. ;-)
Hm ... maybe generalizing Andrew's authn/authz stuff? Mozilla would probably like improved Persona support? Andrew would be good for that and ISTR he's a freelancer.
I wouldn't mind compensating a student even if she/he would do the work for free anyway. But except for Abhilash, I can't recommend any recent student for a project I think is valuable enough to request such resources without at the same time volunteering to mentor intensively. Not enough experience, and the project I have in mind is not an extension of any GSoC project. And I can't really volunteer at this point.
As for Abhilash himself, I think he should concentrate on his graduate studies. There's no problem with him volunteering the occasional half-day to Mailman, but I've seen far too many students seriously hindered in getting the most out of their graduate study by committing to consulting work. I won't oppose him if he wants to do something, but I won't nominate him.
I doubt I would be able to actually do a contract work at all, even if I wanted to, due to F-1 Visa regulations. Not for next 8 months at least. And I have too much in my plate right now, grad school keep me busy! But I can spend some time to mentor/help someone else as a volunteer for whichever project we choose.
(@Abhilash: If you decide to apply against
my advice, it's just advice. I'll be happy to support you to the extent I can in your Mailman work or your graduate study, whatever you want to do -- though I suspect I'd be useless in the latter role. ;-)
(off the topic: Prof, I would like to talk to you sometime for some advice about studies :)
If somebody else is willing to mentor *my* suggestions: there are a couple of new proposals for DMARC mitigation out there. I would be willing to evaluate them (in the remaining hours) for use in Mailman. Why "evaluate"? As most of you probably know, message signing and signature validation are normally considered MTA functions, and Mailman needn't/shouldn't try to duplicate that functionality. However, with experimental protocols, of course they won't be in production MTAs for a while, so it *might* be worthwhile to offer support in Mailman as a spur/temporary workaround while the MTAs implement the new protocols.
Again off the topic: I recently came to know (from my Advisor) that my implementation of Digital signatures in mailman can be improved by implementing algorithms where the server does not actually decrypts the email, just transforms it so that the recipients can decrypt that. I don't have the details, but I am gonna explore more in that front soon.
I don't (yet) have a developer to recommend, though.
Steve
Mailman-Developers mailing list Mailman-Developers@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-developers Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-developers/raj.abhilash1%40g...
Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9
-- thanks, Abhilash Raj
I saw on the MOSS list that the proposal deadline is about 3 days away.
If no one thinks it's objectionable, I could suggest putting in a proposal to pay for testing, bug triage work, i18n work (choosing a new platform and porting our translation effort to a new platform), and similar project management work. I have just started a FLOSS project management consulting firm http://changeset.nyc and could do this work. I am trying to limit my suggestions here to stuff that's backlogged and that volunteers don't have enough time + interest to do in the next 3 months.
Sumana
On Wed Oct 28 03:01:53 2015 GMT-0400, Abhilash Raj wrote:
On 10/27/2015 09:30 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
Barry Warsaw writes:
What would *we* like to do that we can't do because of resources?
That's where I'm blocked. I can't honestly put myself up as a money-sink: I wouldn't mind getting paid for my effort, but I wouldn't put in any less effort just because I'm unpaid. ;-)
Hm ... maybe generalizing Andrew's authn/authz stuff? Mozilla would probably like improved Persona support? Andrew would be good for that and ISTR he's a freelancer.
I wouldn't mind compensating a student even if she/he would do the work for free anyway. But except for Abhilash, I can't recommend any recent student for a project I think is valuable enough to request such resources without at the same time volunteering to mentor intensively. Not enough experience, and the project I have in mind is not an extension of any GSoC project. And I can't really volunteer at this point.
As for Abhilash himself, I think he should concentrate on his graduate studies. There's no problem with him volunteering the occasional half-day to Mailman, but I've seen far too many students seriously hindered in getting the most out of their graduate study by committing to consulting work. I won't oppose him if he wants to do something, but I won't nominate him.
I doubt I would be able to actually do a contract work at all, even if I wanted to, due to F-1 Visa regulations. Not for next 8 months at least. And I have too much in my plate right now, grad school keep me busy! But I can spend some time to mentor/help someone else as a volunteer for whichever project we choose.
(@Abhilash: If you decide to apply against
my advice, it's just advice. I'll be happy to support you to the extent I can in your Mailman work or your graduate study, whatever you want to do -- though I suspect I'd be useless in the latter role. ;-)
(off the topic: Prof, I would like to talk to you sometime for some advice about studies :)
If somebody else is willing to mentor *my* suggestions: there are a couple of new proposals for DMARC mitigation out there. I would be willing to evaluate them (in the remaining hours) for use in Mailman. Why "evaluate"? As most of you probably know, message signing and signature validation are normally considered MTA functions, and Mailman needn't/shouldn't try to duplicate that functionality. However, with experimental protocols, of course they won't be in production MTAs for a while, so it *might* be worthwhile to offer support in Mailman as a spur/temporary workaround while the MTAs implement the new protocols.
Again off the topic: I recently came to know (from my Advisor) that my implementation of Digital signatures in mailman can be improved by implementing algorithms where the server does not actually decrypts the email, just transforms it so that the recipients can decrypt that. I don't have the details, but I am gonna explore more in that front soon.
I don't (yet) have a developer to recommend, though.
Steve
Mailman-Developers mailing list Mailman-Developers@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-developers Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-developers/raj.abhilash1%40g...
Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9
-- thanks, Abhilash Raj
-- Please excuse terseness; sent from mobile.
participants (4)
-
Abhilash Raj -
Barry Warsaw -
Stephen J. Turnbull -
Sumana Harihareswara