CELF Open Project Proposal 2011

Introduction
The CELF Open Project Proposal is a process whereby members of the public can submit to the CE Linux Forum ideas and proposals for projects that they think should be worked on to enhance embedded Linux.

Each year, CELF spends money on contract work to improve Linux for use in embedded systems. Some of the projects we have sponsored in the past include Linux-tiny, DirectFB enhancements, smem, U-boot and kexecboot improvements, and Squashfs and YAFFS mainlining.

This process is open to the public, as well as CELF and Linux Foundation members.

Proposal format
Each proposal should include a one-line summary, the name of the proposer, and a description of the bugfix, feature or technology improvement that is being proposed. The description should be brief (it can be as short as 1 or 2 paragraphs), but should include enough information to understand the scope of the proposal. It is important to list the expected benefit of the work.

The proposal should also list related or already existing work, and the expected scope of effort required to accomplish the goal. Finally, if you know of someone who might be interested or willing to work on the project, please include that as well.

Please use the CELF Open Project Proposal template as your starting text. Submit the proposal in wikimedia format, and include the following sections:
 * Summary
 * Proposer
 * Description
 * Related Work
 * Scope
 * Contractor Candidates
 * Comments

Note that one-line headings use the format "; section name: value words", and multi-line headings use wiki 'heading' format, which is the section name preceded and followed by 2 equal signs. Finally, please include the category tag shown in the sample and template.

The proposals will be posted on the wiki, and commented on, both on the mailing list and on the wiki, during the proposal review period.

Sample
Here is a sample proposal: Add bootchart boot logger functionality to busybox


 * Summary: Add bootchart boot logger functionality to busybox


 * Proposer: Tim Bird

Description
It would be nice to add bootchart functionality to busybox. Most distributions now have bootchart available as a package, which allows an administrator to see machine resource usage and process startup times, for the system bootup. The existing bootchart boot logger, however, is a shell script, which consumes too much resources when running on an embedded platform.

The Android system includes bootchart boot logger functionality in it's 'init' program. It would be nice to include similar boot logging functionality built into busybox.

The feature would be to grab information from various /proc files, and save them into the files expected by bootchart, for a duration specified as a parameter to the 'init' applet of busybox. The duration parameter could be passed as an environment variable from the kernel, copied from the kernel command line, or set in a specially-named file. (Note that the latter two are used in Android. It would probably be good to keep compatibility with the Android method of parameter passing, to avoid confusion.)

Note that the code for this in Android 'init' is licensed under the Apache license. It's less than 400 lines of C code.

The benefit of adding this feature to busybox is that it would allow easy visualization of embedded system bootup information, for any system that uses busybox (which is pretty much all of them except for Android!)

Related work

 * Bootchart - http://www.bootchart.org/
 * Android init and bootchart
 * Usage guide: see http://elinux.org/Using_Bootchart_on_Android
 * Code: see http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/system/core.git;a=blob_plain;f=init/bootchart.c;hb=HEAD

Scope
This should take less than 2 weeks of development and test effort.

Contractor Candidates
Denys Vlasenko (current busybox maintainer)

Comments
You can also look at entries from the 2010 project year for examples of proposals that were received that year. See Project Proposals for 2010.

Where to send the proposal
Send your proposal to the celinux-dev mailing list, at: celinux-dev (at) tree.celinuxforum.org. To do this, you need to subscribe to the list. You can do this via the celinux-dev mailing list web page.

An alternative is available (although not preferred), which is to send the proposal to the the CE Linux forum project-proposal mailing list, at: project-proposal (at) tree.celinuxforum.org.

Sending the proposal to the celinux-dev list is preferred, because other people can review the proposal, discuss it, and make suggestions.

Proposal Deadline
Proposals for the initial 2011 project list will be accepted until January 31, 2011.

You may submit proposals after that, but they may not be considered for the initial project list. Proposals submitted after January 31 may be used later in 2011, or in future years' project lists, if the proposal is still relevant.

Project bids
Once the proposal period is complete, the Architecture Group of the forum will solicit bids for the projects, in order to determine the feasibility and cost of each project.

CELF will solicit bids via a variety of mechanisms, including working directly with individual contractors with whom CELF has worked previously, and issuing a call for bids from the general public.

The bidding period will be the first weeks of March, 2011.

See CELF project bidding instructions for instructions for submitting a bid, if you would like to be involved in contracting for one of the candidate projects this year.

Project Selection and Completion
The CE Linux Forum will select the projects that it wants to fund. Every member of CELF will have a vote on the projects. The Architecture Group of the forum will collect the votes and determine the list of projects to fund for 2011.

Once the projects are selected, the Architecture Group will work with contractors to actually perform the work. AG members or workgroup chairs will manage the projects to completion. Progress on the work will be reported in CELF's monthly newsletters and in relevant community mailing lists.

The project proposals so far
See Project Proposals for 2011 for the proposals that have been made so far.

For the year 2010
As examples of the projects CELF was interested in in the past, the following projects were approved for funding by the CE Linux Forum for the year 2010.


 * 1)  Add LZO compression support to SquashFS
 * 2)  Add PramFS filesystem to the mainline kernel
 * 3)  Investigate UBIFS mount time problems
 * 4) Mainline the YAFFS2 file system
 * 5) Create a trace data format standard
 * 6)  Create online training for using RT-Preempt
 * 7)  Add bootchart support to busybox
 * 8)  Enhance support for ARM processors in U-Boot
 * 9)  Improve the kexecboot program
 * 10)  Mainline function-sections patches

For the year 2011
(Projects will be listed here when they are accepted for funding)

Q and A
Q. How is this different from other "open project" systems, like Google's "Summer of Code"? A. Other systems often require that the submitter of the proposal be the one volunteering to do the work. With CELF's Open Project Proposal, anyone who can think of a good idea can submit it, (possibly with hinting about someone who might be a good candidate to perform the work).

Of course you can also submit something you are interested in working on yourself, in the hopes that CELF will fund the work. - Q. How much money is CELF willing to spend on these projects? A. The exact amount shall remain a mystery. However, this year CELF plans to budget a little more than $200,000 for contract work of this nature. This is enough to push some interesting projects forward, that make a real difference over time. - '''Q. Are you daft? Why would you let other people suggest ways to spend CELF's money?''' A. Hey, it's open source. Good ideas can come from anywhere. Note that CELF still controls what projects get selected, and hence where the money will be spent. That's one of the privileges of CELF membership. However, CELF will publish the list of projects that it will fund, as well as the projects that were not funded. It is hoped that other entities may contribute money or resources to push some of the technologies or features forward, independently or in conjunction with CELF's contribution. - Q. Where will the proposals be published? A. Right here on the eLinux wiki. See Project Proposals for 2011 - Q. How will CELF decide on contractors for these projects? A. After collecting the proposals, CELF will solicit bids for contractors for these proposals. In some cases, CELF may proactively contact individuals or groups they think would be good candidates for doing certain work (such as previous CELF contractors, or people already working on certain projects, who are available.

After talking to various contractor candidates, the CELF Architecture Group will select the contractors for the projects, contracts will be drawn up, and the work started.