2007 rsync.net Code Bounties

rsync.net is built on open standards and, largely, on free, open-source software.

In the course of our work and interaction with customers, we often come across requirements not yet met by our community. We have chosen to respond to these needs by actively soliciting professional programmers to resolve them.

We have chosen five projects for 2007 and are contributing an initial $500 bounty to each project.

Projects listed below that have not been adopted will (presumably) be adopted as the bounty grows larger, so we encourage the community to contribute funds to these projects. See below for details on supporting a particular project.

The Projects

Vmware 6.x on FreeBSD

Years ago, Vmware 3.x would run quite well on FreeBSD 4.x. Unfortunately, Vmware 3.x has long since fallen out of support (one cannot obtain a license from Vmware) and even if it did still work on current versions of FreeBSD, the feature set of Vmware 3.x is somewhat obsolete.

The Goal: A fully functioning Vmware 6.x running on FreeBSD 6.x OR 7.x as a host operating system. A roadmap for support of future Vmware releases on FreeBSD (especially support for 3d hardware virtualization), the creation of a /usr/ports/emulators/vmware5, and an official maintainer of this port.

Current Bounty: $3500

Contributors: rsync.net ($500), Michael Koerner ($120), Hellmuth Michaelis ($100), Stefan Zehl ($50), Randy Bush ($500), Doug Poland ($50), J. Gill ($150), John Doherty ($50), Robert Eckardt ($270), Paul Hoffman ($100), Trent Nelson (on behalf of OnResolve Ltd (www.onresolve.com)) ($1110), Nakata Maho ($500)

Status: CLAIMED by Orlando Bassotto - currently in progress.

Updating Duplicity and establishing a maintainer

Duplicity is a very elegant mash-up of librsync, gpg and tar. Normally a gpg-encrypted file would not be "rsync-able" because even a small change in the file would cause the ciphertext to be completely random in relation to the previous ciphertext. Duplicity combines librsync and gpg in a way that makes it possible to send bandwidth-efficient "changes only" backups of an unencrypted dataset to an encrypted dataset on the remote host.

Unfortunately, duplicity has been stuck at version 0.4.2 for over a year and does not have a current maintainer.

The Goal: Immediately release a new 0.4.3 version with existing patches for known issues. Then create a 0.5 development release that, after testing, will be released as a stable 0.5.x. Establish a maintainer for the duplicity project.

Current Bounty: $500

Contributors: rsync.net ($500)

Status: Adopted by Kenneth Loafman (kenneth@loafman.com) - COMPLETE

Working Unison support and long options support in scponly shell

The scponly shell is a very useful Unix tool that allows one to restrict remote SSH usage to the ability to run scp while denying innteractive logins. Although Unison support has been listed as a feature for some time, that support is broken. Further, there are problems with option handling that (effectively) make it impossible to run rsync over scponly.

The Goal: Fix Unison support in scponly and implement long options support as described here.

Current Bounty: $500

Contributors: rsync.net ($500)

Status: Adopted by Kaleb Pederson (kibab@icehouse.net) - COMPLETE

FreeBSD UFS2 problem resolution and standardized UFS2 stress testing

In the course of running rsync.net, we have discovered a fair number of problems with FreeBSD UFS2 - especially relating to quotas, snapshots and large (>2TB) filesystems. We will be publishing problem reports for these issues over the next few weeks. In addition, we would like to propose the creation of a standardized UFS2 stress testing application (or suite of applications) that could be used by the FreeBSD release engineering group to identify problems before versions are released.

The Goal: Write and implement patches for UFS2 problem reports that rsync.net will submit, and develop standardized UFS2 stress test application(s).

Current Bounty: $650

Contributors: rsync.net ($500), Doug Poland ($50), High Speed Rails Inc. ($100)

Status: UNCLAIMED

Outstanding rsync feature set

We are, all of us in the Unix community, indebted to Andrew Tridgell, Paul Mackerras, Wayne Davison, and everyone else who has contributed to rsync, librsync and related tools and projects. We plan to run a code bounty each year, and every year we will contribute funds toward new features and/or bug fixes in rsync itself.

We are currently discussing what should be addressed this year on the rsync mailing list (https://lists.samba.org/mailman//listinfo/rsync).

The Goal: TBA

Current Bounty: $500

Contributors: rsync.net ($500)

Status: UNCLAIMED

Making Contributions

If a project above has been claimed, no further contributions are necessary.

Unclaimed projects, however, are more likely to be adopted as the bounty grows.

We encourage everyone with an interest in these projects to contribute funds toward thier completion. If you wish to contribute to one or more of the projects, simply email info@rsync.net with the project, the amount you wish to commit, and whether your donation should be anonymous or not.

The current bounty for each project will be updated regularly along with a list of individual donators and their donation amount. When the project has been completed, donators should be prepared to remit funds to the author(s) (preferably via paypal). If a project is not claimed (or is claimed and not completed) your commitment will not be called upon.

Please direct all questions to info@rsync.net.