Contributing to Open-Source
Some of us have been using opensource software for a long time, but how many times have we contributed back to the community? Indeed, it looks much simpler to use a product than to help developing it. However, sometimes this is not the case. There are a lot of projects out there waiting for our help. So, if you feel it’s time to give it back to the community, here are some ways to do it:
- open bugs when the software doesn’t work. Don’t just quit using the software because it doesn’t work properly. Open a bug and you will see that eventually it will be fixed.
- if you have the know-how or the will to do it, fix the bug by yourself and submit your patch, either to the mailing lists or attach it to the bug report.
- subscribe to the mailing lists of the projects you are interested. Soon you will find yourself giving your opinion and suggestion and thus contributing to the project.
- if stability is not a major concern for you, keep updating your software to the latest version and give your input back to the developers.
- help developing new features. Often opensource projects lack new features because the lack o resources to develop them.
So, you still think you cannot help because you are not a developer, or you don’t know the programming language being used by the project you want to help? Projects need help in many other ways other than developing code:
- you can help with translations. Translate it to your own language, or if a translation already exists, review it to ensure accuracy.
- help writing and reviewing the docs.
- you can help by just being a test user and reporting back the problems.
- help maintaining website, moderating forums, etc..
Do you feel the urge to help? A good place to start is sourceforge.net. Besides the thousands (or even millions?) of projects that you can browse trough, there is a “Help Wanted” section, where you can see all the requests for help from projects being hosted at sourcefourge. From help with design, to development and documentation, I’m sure you will find something that interests you.
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February 14th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Hello there, great post.
Last year I gave two short talks about this subject to people interested in Free Software and your post neatly sums up what I told them about engaging the Free Software movement and entering the active community.
I’d just add to the part on “what you can do if you are not a developer” a note on the fact that a lot of software nowadays is data driven and therefore easily modifiable by end-users with a little speck of the hacker spirit in them. I’ve seen cases of end users fixing bugs related to data driven parts of an application before the developers
February 15th, 2007 at 12:03 am
Hi Pedro.
But that goes to the “open bugs and fix them if you know how” part
The second part was more intended to someone that doesn’t know how the software works under the cover and has no knowledge to even look at config or input files. Those ideas were targeted to the basic user, that interacts with the application without knowing how it works. Off course this delimitation between developer non-developer tasks is always subjective.
Thanks for stopping by