plans.txt

= What we plan to do =

== Improve the documentation ==

NTP Classic's documentation is an untidy, confusing heap of details
that is intimidating to novices and confusing even to experts.  We
know how to do better at both
http://catb.org/gpsd/time-service-intro.html[Introductory] and
http://catb.org/gpsd/gpsd-time-service-howto.html[Intermediate]
levels and will apply that knowledge to NTPsec.

== Create a real end-to-end test suite ==

Our team has a concentration of expertise in software testing.
NTP Classic never had rigorous end-to-end tests that
could be run out of the box to verify the correctness of the code.
Putting such a suite fully in place is one of our early goals.

== Hammer the bug list flat ==

The NTP Classic codebase had accumulated serious
vulnerabilities. We've worked overtime to identify and plug the
critical holes; more needs to be done on the lesser ones. Our goal is
to reach the exceptionally low defect-per-thousand-hour rates of GPSD
and RTEMS; we have the people and the skills to do it.

== Throw away more code ==

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry famously said "Perfection is achieved,
not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left
to take away."  This is our project motto.  The more code we can throw
away, the fewer potential vulnerabilities and complexity issues we
will have.  There are many opportunities here; see our
link:removal-plan.html[removal plans], and holler if we're removing
something you need.

== Broaden community participation ==

The NTP Classic project slid into decline, developing serious
vulnerabilities it was unable to effectively address, because it made
choices that closed it off from the wider open-source community.
NTPSec was forked in large part to reverse those choices. We want
more community participation, more open-source code review, and we'll
even welcome drive-by patches to address point problems.

== Build a hardware test lab ==

Precision clock sources are tricky things, and testing in a simulation
environment has limits. We aim to build a lab where we can
remote-control refclocks and a network of ntpd instances for
live testing.  This will take money: see
link:getting-involved.html[Getting Involved] for how you can help.

== Deep refactoring ==

The code can be further hardened by repartitioning it into smaller,
more loosely coupled pieces. A prime opportunity is by divorcing clock
management from the synchronization algorithms into a separate
refclockd.

== Get it all IPv6-ready ==

Network Time Protocol is unhealthily entangled with IPv4.  As address
exhaustion forces the world towards IPv6, this needs to be fixed.

== Recruit and educate a new generation ==

NTP Classic came altogether too close to becoming a black hole of
unmaintainability because only one human being fully understood the
Byzantine clock-synchronization algorithms at its core.  For
sustainability, that knowledge needs to become more widely spread.

image::clocktower64.png[align="center"]

//end