Looking for an Outreachy intern this winter

Making Kinto instances discoverable

The Kinto project aims to bring storage instances to everyone, attached to their Firefox Accounts (Well, it actually supports multiple authentication schemes, but we want to promote Firefox Accounts as a first step).

Currently, Kinto is thought of as a centralised server: there is one instance, and everyone authenticates on this instance. Items are shared between users of a same instance.

This doesn't resonate well with many of our goals: scalability is harder when there is one endpoint, and it's also not interoperable.

For instance, imagine Alice and Bob. Bob is using Mozilla's servers to store his data, whereas Alice deployed her own Kinto instance.

There are different use cases:

• Alice wants to use Routina, an application that stores its data inside a Kinto instance. As such, Routina needs a way to discover where it should store its data, and send the requests to this server.
• Bob and Alice want to collaborate on a set of data (think about a webapp to manage their shared expenses). There should be a way for Alice to host everything and grant access to Bob on her data. The webapp should be able to use the correct server.

Here are the different steps that could allow these scenarios:

• At the moment they authenticate, the client detects the email address used, and relies on the domain part to do a Web Finger request on the domain [1] and for the specified user.
• In case the identified server doesn't support WebFinger, it uses a central repository to lookup where the Kinto server is located.
• Once the Kinto server is located, all requests should be issued against this server.

In terms of code changes, here is what it looks like (rough step by step). The details are still to be fleshed out - this is a rough first version:

• Update the Kinto.js client to find the server location. It should first rely on WebFinger.
• Create a central repository of server locations. This could be contained in the FxA profile server or in a central Kinto collection.
• Update the Kinto.js client to fall-back to this central repository in case no Web Finger exists.
• Investigate on ways to store this information directly in the web browser. It could also be configurable by the JavaScript client (with an UX that looks like what Remote Storage proposes).
• Work on the first user experience: how can client learn they can chose which server to use?
• Ship it!

Want to join?

So, if you think that this project is exciting and you would like to join, please check that you:

• Identify as a woman (cis or trans), a trans man, or genderqueer person or you are a resident or national of the United States of any gender who is Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander;
• Are or will be 18 years of age or older by December 7, 2015;
• Are available for a full-time, 40 hours a week internship between December and March.
• Think that open source software makes a difference, and would like to work with us on going further with making a kick-ass Kinto ecosystem;

Check the eligibility details on the section of the GNOME wiki and get it touch with us!

If you are not sure how to get started, the best way is to start reading the documentation, especially the tutorials and then reach out to us by joining the Kinto development mailing list and the #storage channel on irc.mozilla.org.