Documentation: Add Project Ideas document

We already had such a page on the wiki, but it's outdated and the wiki
is supposed to go the way of the dodo anyway.

This is a fresh start to make sure that all ideas we're coming up with
are still current and that there are mentors willing to support them.

Change-Id: Idd68f845930bd37a2293969b9a153cf584d6d15f
Signed-off-by: Patrick Georgi <pgeorgi@google.com>
Reviewed-on: https://review.coreboot.org/c/30972
Reviewed-by: Angel Pons <th3fanbus@gmail.com>
Tested-by: build bot (Jenkins) <no-reply@coreboot.org>

2 files changed, 75 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/contributing/project_ideas.md b/Documentation/contributing/project_ideas.md
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+# Project Ideas
+
+This section collects ideas to improve coreboot and related projects and
+should serve as a pool of ideas for people who want to enter the field
+of firmware development but need some guidance what to work on.
+
+These tasks can be adopted as part of programs like Google Summer of
+Code or by motivated individuals outside such programs.
+
+Each entry should outline what would be done, the benefit it brings
+to the project, the pre-requisites, both in knowledge and parts. They
+should also list people interested in supporting people who want to work
+on them - since we started building this list for Google Summer of Code,
+we'll adopt its term for those people and call them mentors.
+
+## Provide toolchain binaries
+Our crossgcc subproject provides a uniform compiler environment for
+working on coreboot and related projects. Sadly, building it takes hours,
+which is a bad experience when trying to build coreboot the first time.
+
+Provide packages/installers of our compiler toolchain for Linux distros,
+Windows, Mac OS. For Windows, this should also include the environment
+(shell, make, ...).
+
+### Requirements
+
+* coreboot knowledge: Should know how to build coreboot images and where
+  the compiler comes into play in our build system.
+* other knowledge: Should know how packages or installers for their
+  target OS work. Knowledge of the GCC build system is a big plus
+* hardware requirements: Nothing special
+
+### Mentors
+* Patrick Georgi <patrick@georgi.software>
+
+## Support Power9/Power8 in coreboot
+There are some basic PPC64 stubs in coreboot, and there's open hardware
+in TALOS2 and its family. While they already have fully open source
+firmware, coreboot support adds a unified story for minimal firmware
+across architectures.
+
+### Requirements
+* coreboot knowledge: Should be familiar with making chipset level
+  changes to the code.
+* other knowledge: A general idea of the Power architecture, the more,
+  the better
+* hardware requirements: QEMU Power bring-up exists, and even if it
+  probably needs to be fixed up, that shouldn't be an exceedingly large
+  task. For everything else, access to real Power8/9 hardware and recovery
+  tools (e.g. for external flashing) is required.
+
+### Mentors
+* Timothy Pearson <tpearson@raptorengineering.com>
+
+## Support QEMU AArch64 or MIPS
+Having QEMU support for the architectures coreboot can boot helps with
+some (limited) compatibility testing: While QEMU generally doesn't need
+much hardware init, any CPU state changes in the boot flow will likely
+be quite close to reality.
+
+That could be used as a baseline to ensure that changes to architecture
+code doesn't entirely break these architectures
+
+### Requirements
+* coreboot knowledge: Should know the general boot flow in coreboot.
+* other knowledge: This will require knowing how the architecture
+  typically boots, to adapt the coreboot payload interface to be
+  appropriate and, for example, provide a device tree in the platform's
+  typical format.
+* hardware requirements: since QEMU runs practically everywhere and
+  needs no recovery mechanism, these are suitable projects when no special
+  hardware is available.
+
+### Mentors
diff --git a/Documentation/index.md b/Documentation/index.md
index 433edfa54d..58ec11d148 100644
--- a/Documentation/index.md
+++ b/Documentation/index.md
@@ -163,6 +163,7 @@ Contents:
 * [Getting Started](getting_started/index.md)
 * [Rookie Guide](lessons/index.md)
 * [Coding Style](coding_style.md)
+* [Project Ideas](contributing/project_ideas.md)
 * [Code of Conduct](community/code_of_conduct.md)
 * [Community forums](community/forums.md)
 * [coreboot at conferences](community/conferences.md)