Open source software (OSS) development teams typically use electronic means, such as emails, instant messaging, or forums, to conduct open and public discussions. Researchers investigated mailing lists considering them as a hub for project communication.
The tasks consists of the implementation of a miner able to extract the communications among developers of a given software project (that is the input of the miner).
More information here: http://sback.it/publications/msr2013.pdf