How do you contribute to open source projects?
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Missing Option... (Score:5, Insightful)
I evangelize!
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I evangelize!
That's what I do! Usually I astonish my colleagues at faculty doing things with my computers that they can't or don't know. Today, by example, I's submitting my homework on Phonetics in typed form, while all my colleagues will have done the exercises by hand for it would be a PITA to insert each and every IPA symbol needed. BTW, they will be surprised I edited a PDF.
i educate (Score:3)
there's a whole bunch of people i've encountered who
1) have never heard of open source
2) have never heard of specific programs they could use (i.e. firefox, open office)
3) are suspicious of using it
4) can't understand why anyone would write software for free (i.e. donate their time)
5) somehow equate it to socialism/communism
Re:i educate (Score:4, Insightful)
So much of the Internet is running on Linux and Apache that most people already use Open Source, and likely do so daily. The hard part is getting them to realize it. Most don't care. Which is kind of the point. We Geeks tend to care, and have two basic choices where we work.
Open Source (and not supported)
Or
Proprietary (and supported)
And to be honest, I've come to realize that in many of the cases, even if the support isn't "Professional Services", it is actually better using Open Source. The cost for having another company to blame, however, is priceless.
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Proprietary (and supported)
Well, if only that was true... I remember a long time ago (Win95 ?) I applied a service pack in a different language than the OS. The result was a clusterfuck. I called MS and from the conversation I could tell that something wasn't right. After a while I asked: "It sounds like you think I'm using a pirated version", which I wasn't (full on-site license with hundreds of seats). I think it was my beginning of a search for something better.
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Hence the old adage "no one ever got sacked for buying IBM". :)
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Conversation I had the other day:
Him: I am waiting for the purchase to be approved so I can get Photoshop and install it. I still need to learn it
Me: Why don't you go the open-source route and use GiMP like I do?
H: I need to learn how to use photoshop for my job.
M: Are you sure? I've never used photoshop and get everything done.
H: I will wait for the purchase order.
So I had a guy who wanted a tool just because of name recognition as opposed to function. He needed "training" anyway but could not get past a t
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Because Photoshop is THE standard. GIMP lacks several key features for commercial use.
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Dunno if it still is the case, but years back a Wacom tablet worked way better with Linux and the Gimp than Windows and Photoshop. It was slightly more difficult to set up, but the online resources for the open source drivers worked well and provided more features. Basic things like the brush size, opacity or darkness dependent on pen pressure.
Photoshop didn't have the option to connect those while the Gimp did.
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Makes sense. I used an old version in 2005 or so.
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Because Photoshop is THE standard. GIMP lacks several key features for commercial use.
Which features?
Please don't go with the classic "missing CMYK support", because not that many create content for print media.
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Not that many GIMP users, you mean.
You know that print media includes things like flyers, posters, etc. right? Promotional materials?
If you get out and walk around a while in (at least in areas with a population density greater than north dakota) you may notice a lot of them. Those were pretty much all created using CYMK.
I say may, because if you stay fixated on your phone while walking the entire time then you probably won't notice them, but please do me a favor and look up from time to time - I'm getting
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http://wiki.gimp.org/wiki/Road... [gimp.org]
There you go.
All those have been implemented for a *long* time in Photoshop.
The biggest ones for me are Filter/Adjustment layers and Layer effects.
More integrated RAW support and 16-bit/channel would also be good.
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Agreed. It is the standard, but the point is, that he didn't even really know what it is he could do or wanted to do with it - It was just the one tool he had heard of that could do "Graphics" and so thought that is what he needed. (it could be that he could, but was unwilling to explore alternatives)
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Because Photoshop is THE standard. GIMP lacks several key features for commercial use.
Just like ArcGIS is THE standard for GIS software - but it's a nasty, clunky, ugly piece of shit and open source QGIS pisses all over it.
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I'm not saying this is a good idea, but I think a lot more people would give GIMP a chance if instead of companies buying photoshop for their employees, they gave them $1000 which they could then use on whatever software they wanted, and keep the rest.
It's pretty easy to spend money that doesn't belong to you.
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What did he need it for? Basic photo editing.
No, what he wanted it for is to get professional Photoshop experience on his resume and as a stepping stone to a better paid position. He just can't say that and you're too focused on technical aspects to realize he's the smart one getting the company to foot the bill. Or did you get a check when you saved the company money by using GIMP? Do you think the potential license savings is going to make you more marketable? Unless you're looking at employers trying to skimp in all the wrong places, you're not. He
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OpenOffice is obsolete, you should be telling people about LibreOffice.
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there's a whole bunch of people i've encountered who [......] have never heard of specific programs they could use (i.e. firefox, open office)
I find it disturbing how many people i encounter who don't even know what a web browser is - even though they use one every day.
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my mom doesn't know what a web browser is.
i have to refer to it by the color of it's icon...
or i can just say something non-sensical like log into AOL...
and she will invariable open a web browser
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Point of order: last I checked Oracle owned 'Open Office' & it is anything but open, ahem.
Libre Office is the fork that is still truly open I believe, or as open as anything ever can be, except maybe for Miley Cyrus' legs.
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4) can't understand why anyone would write software for free (i.e. donate their time) 5) somehow equate it to socialism/communism
Would you perchance be American? I don't think there's any other developed country where (4) would be that strange and where (5) would even be brought up, let alone brought up in a negative light. That peculiarity of the US has always fascinated me.
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The biggest excuse for not using it is most people seem to associate it with amateur efforts and buggy software. They are surprised when I tell them that, for example, android and Firefox are open source.
But android and Firefox are amateur efforts and buggy software!
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Pretty sure this is the last option figuring on the poll.
Missing Implementation... (Score:3)
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Wow. And you were the one accusing the alleged geek of a knee-jerk reaction? So what do we call your last couple posts - uber-jerk reaction?
Your honour, I cite into evidence exhibit A: "The Big Bang Theory"! (hey, everyone I know loves a funny geek :).
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At least they have the decency to post at score 0 when they litter the place.
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This went surprisingly well.
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Well said ;)
Not a developer (Score:1)
So if I find myself using a piece of software and it is supported, then I'm glad to kick in some money to say thanks.
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fbi.gov
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LOL! Or www.aa.org perhaps...? >8^D
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I used to (Score:3)
I submitted code to several major (and minor) projects over the years. You may still be using something I've touched. But I don't do this any longer - there is not enough time and paid projects could be just as much fun (all the while paying for food and shelter)
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I was paid for my most recent open source contributions.
I submitted code to a moderate project earlier this year, after I suggested I did so to my employer -- an obscure part of the British civil service. It fits well with the government's IT strategy, but I wasn't expecting it to be as easy as it was.
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so where did you insert that backdoor?
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an obscure part of the British civil service.
The Laundry?
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In the old days, we could do this because there weren't as many of us and there was nowhere near the corporate support (non-existent) or stupid rules.
Sigh.
Re:I used to (Score:4, Interesting)
I tried, but the open source projects I contributed to simply won't take my code. I gave them patches and/or commits according to whatever garden variety version control they fancy. I followed their code style and released copyright. The pull request passes continuous integration in green, no flying colors. Never heard back a word. A few months or years later, someone else gets fed up and forked the project. This kept happening to the projects I try to contribute to.
Donating money always works. Nobody ever refused my money.
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When you want to submit codepatches, always look for existing patches that are sitting there. Are the maintainers communicative and do they accept patches? Then it is worthwhile to submit something. If they aren't, it becomes quite hard to expect them to do accept your patch.
Not saying you are to blame, you aren't, but there are healthy projects with responsible maintainers and unhealthy projects.
Some people seem to be made to make something and throw it over the fence, while others are apparently good at m
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Re: (Score:1)
I submitted code to several major (and minor) projects over the years. You may still be using something I've touched. But I don't do this any longer - there is not enough time and paid projects could be just as much fun (all the while paying for food and shelter)
I don't contribute code, but your experience sounds a bit like a similar situation for me. For a couple months, I used to edit wikipedia nearly a decade ago. I liked the ideals, the syntax and the fact that I could help translate something or expand a nascent stub about a little known city back home.
I wish I could say it was just the lack of time that stopped me. Nope. It was the drama of having an article disappear without any way warning what happened, any notability explanation and of course, no way to r
Multiple answers (Score:2)
I contribute code and bug report and participate in the community (read: answer questions of novice users).
So I'll choose the community option because it makes me look best while being most vague.
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Money money (Score:2)
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Then, it goes to the Download directly. No thanks, no mail, nothing. Almost insulting. That made me wonder where that money actually goes...
Could be worse... I really hate when you give money to a cause, or purchase an item, and they "congratulate" you on being such a superior discerning person.
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Apparently as of this month, company account data for British companies (which Canonical is) is available for free download. It's a set of large zip files, and I can't find a nice website with an interface over it -- perhaps something will appear in the next few months.
Background: http://www.companybug.com/comp... [companybug.com]
Accounts data: http://download.companieshouse... [companieshouse.gov.uk]
Company data: http://download.companieshouse... [companieshouse.gov.uk]
Company number 06870835, "CANONICAL GROUP LIMITED".
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The Synergy Project is pretty supportive of donators, and those that donate are able to vote on what gets fixed/worked on next. It doesn't hurt that it's a fantastic project.
http://www.synergy-project.org... [synergy-project.org]
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This should be multiple choice (Score:5, Insightful)
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If this poll is good for anything, I notice at this point writing documentation has a pitiful 3 votes. of course I do open source for fun, I write lots of documentation at work.
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I for one am glad that one of my friends does all that Documentation work for LibreOffice and other open source Office clones.
She's great.
Seriously, more Open Source documentation contributors would help a lot.
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I did a bit of documentation work for Wordpress a few years back and found them very helpful and easy to work for.
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I have written documentation, but more code. Can't vote both.
The code is the documentation, therefore I always write both.
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Agree - I've submitted code, patches, and bug reports, but mostly just a user. I've made financial contributions of one sort or another a few times as well.
Re:This should be multiple choice (Score:4, Funny)
I selected I submit code but I participate in the community as well. Supporting other users' questions and encouraging them to file bug reports is equally important to patching those bugs in the code. It's all one big cycle, really.
I'm a BSD user, I do pretty much the same things to support my community except I also follow the time honored BSD tradition of yelling and screaming at noobs to scare them away.
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I contributed to IPv4 and IPv6 and sec (Score:1)
Now stop whining, you overpriveledged millenials!
(and, yes, it was with another name, duh)
Supporting the community (Score:1)
I send out tons of ignored pull requests (Score:2)
Missing Option (Score:1)
I run a project?
Spread the words and report issues. (Score:2)
That's all. I don't do much since I am BUSY in my life. :(
Money Fulfillment? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I've thought about contributing to OSS projects as a way to have something to show to prospective clients / future employers. For the last decade I've been involved in stuff that's pretty closed, as well as being the *only* thing I would have to discuss in an interview.
OSS projects seem to me like one way to add experience and talking points, or to get involved in stuff that you're interested in exploring / working on, but that your current job doesn't have anything to do with. Maybe you're working a job th
I post useful stuff for _me_ (Score:2)
I find it difficult to enter into an existing project for various reasons - sometimes I can't get a build environment working, or the code is such a mess I just don't feel like trying to figure it out. There are other reasons too - like elitism of the existing contributors. But, I've written code that I use frequently that I don't see anybody else has really done - or at least, done well. My code might be too specialized for most people (Oracle PL/SQL mostly), and it's certainly not perfect by any stretch,
Missing option: Oxford comma forks (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
you're probably a git user, aren't you?
Missing Option (Score:2)
Wish I knew exactly how! (Score:2)
I think there is a huge gap between people who could and would want to contribute and projects actually engaging and enabling them to. I have been using free and open source software for a long time but still have no clear idea how I could easily contribute; the few times I tried contributing to tutorials or documentation, I got a "sounds interesting, let's see it!" first and then no more replies and nothing came of it once I did send them what I had. This was a pretty big project (samba), no less, so I ass
I download (Score:2)
Give me your freebies!
All of the above? (Score:2)
I complain on polls! (Score:2)
Bah humbug.
I use the software (Score:1)
There is no point in coding software if nobody uses it, users are just as important to OSS as the software itself.
Missing Option: Start projects and abandon them (Score:2)
Poll of second choices? (Score:2)
Like many others, I want to check more than one.
How would it come out, if this poll were run again, same options (or plus a missing option or two) but the question is: what was your second choice? Which option did you wish you could check after your first choice in the first poll?
Use the software (Score:2)
I think just using the software counts as "participating in the community"
GIMP is a good example...
Winamp spread this way
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care to elaborate?
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i see what you're saying, but i have a different perspective
compare to music
if i listen to an album alot, eventually my friends/family will hear it...if they like it, that's one more listener/customer/concergoer for the band
same with FOSS, imho
if i use GIMP and Audacity to make pixel/art for an Instagram to promote my graphic design side job, that's the same thing
"all images made by GIMP"
now, if you want to be over-litteral, i guess you could say that it's not *the act of using* but the "evangelism" that ha
Pure magic (Score:1)
Voodoo. Mostly voodoo.
Submit code @ 16%? (Score:2)
If only 16% of /. readers commit to FOSS projects, then why am I reading this site?
I might as well read The Onion.
Or do all of them (Score:1)
I manage my own project... (Score:1)
Found something that I thought was missing, implemented it and made it open source ( http://chaiscript.com/ [chaiscript.com] ). Now I consider it to be a rather significant part of my resume, having spent many years developing / maintaining / improving / supporting the same project.
As a project maintainer the things *I most need* from my users:
1. Tell me how you are using the tool! Very few people seem to be willing to share that information. It's huge. If I know how the average user is using the project, I know where to fo
Missing Option, based on these replies (Score:2)
I try it and then tell everyone about the cooler less well known version that completely fails at the same task, but has one feature that I like more making it the obvious choice.
missing option (Score:2)
I write my own.
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I also suspect so, and would like to run an experiment where Windows would be offered for free and see if people still choose Linux.
With Raspberry Pi 2 this will happen, although Linux is still quite natural choice for embedded systems, so there are also actual benefits of choosing Linux in this area.
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That experiment is already running in many work environments, where developers can choose between a Windows machine or a Mac for their workstation. It's not coming out of the dev's pocket, so it's as free of a choice as you're going to get. Where I work there's about 10-20% Windows usage, and I'm one of them...just can't get the hang of that awful, awful Mac wrapper around the supposedly Linux core.
When I used my Mac, my documents had a file actually named ~/foo.txt because I tried to save something to a
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[......] just can't get the hang of that awful, awful Mac wrapper around the supposedly Linux core.
There's no Linux core to OSX - it's some type of BSD. But i agree, OSX is horrible, like Ubuntu's Unity.
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[......] just can't get the hang of that awful, awful Mac wrapper around the supposedly Linux core.
There's no Linux core to OSX - it's some type of BSD. But i agree, OSX is horrible, like Ubuntu's Unity.
That old misunderstanding will never go away.
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thats cause 99.9999999999% of mac users dont care
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Zero cost is a big deal, but open source is sometimes essential or helpful. I fixed a printer driver which otherwise would have made a $300 printer useless under Linux. I made changes to a video utility and a gimp plugin to make them more useful for my purposes.
To a large extent, open source makes zero cost possible. People who think they only care about zero cost would be greatly surprised to see the loss of open source make zero price disappear.