Google SOC, Project Proposal

[Matthias Klose]

Please could you write down the project idea in a wiki page at wiki.ubuntu.com?
Use the SpecTemplate for the page. If you didn't already apply (see [1]), then
please do so before Mar 26. Evaluation and ranking of the submitted projects
will start next week.

  Matthias

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/GoogleSoC2007/Students

Dan Harvey schrieb:
> Hi
> 
> Just though I should introduce myself to the Ubuntu developers mailing
> list and let you rip my idea proposal apart!
> 
> I'm Dan Harvey a Natural Science student at Durham Uni (UK) doing
> computer science and am very keen to help out improving the usability
> of the Ubuntu desktop.
> 
> The idea I propose links in with two other ideas proposed on the
> Ubuntu GSOC wiki for "Integrated web sharing" and "Easy file sharing
> and synchronization" (minus the sync which is a whole different
> problem in itself...). Basically it involves creating a DBus interface
> for file transfer/sharing allowing a unified desktop GUI to access
> different file transfer services to either publish files to share or
> download. This hides the user from any protocol or service differences
> and just lets then do what they want with there data. I'll add a bit
> more detail with a few use cases.
> 
> Say Fred wants to share a file with a few friends but its too large to
> e-mail. So the GUI picks behind the scenes that the web server is best
> so asks the http service (could be new daemon or modified Apache or
> lighter) to host a file and make sure ports are opened for it, then
> returns a url for Fred to give to his friends. All the app has to do
> (be it nautilus, f-spot, banshee) is ask for the file to be hosted and
> the http service does the rest.
> 
> Freds friend then comes along and finds the link to download, as he's
> using Ubuntu the transfer service for him decided to pick the http
> service to download it and he's happy.
> 
> Next is Chris who has recorded a new song with his band (we need a
> gnome based garage band replacement!) and wants to spread it to all
> his friends, and their friends as its an amazing song. So he goes
> though the common GUI which picks (based on its size and who he's
> sending it to) that bit torrent would be the best solution. So this
> App asks the bit torrent service to publish his song, which in turn
> asks the http service to host the torrent file and song to seed it
> which he can in turn send to a friend for them to download.
> 
> Chris's friend also happens to be using Ubuntu (or other gnome based
> OS) and find this link to download, the transfer service now works in
> reverse again and picks the bit torrent service to download it with.
> He gets the song and is happy as well!
> 
> The reason to have a single DBus interface for the different services
> means the user never know which protocol is used for either sharing or
> receiving so are provided with a consistent user interface. This can
> extend to many different protocols in many different applications and
> many different user cases making it quite simple but very powerful.
> 
> Sorry for such a long first message but I want to post the idea here
> so I can get some feed back on it. Will this be useful for people? is
> this a good way to solve this problem? do you see any large flaws in
> it?
> 
> Thanks for your time,
> Dan
>