On Wed, 2010-12-01 at 08:51 +0200, Shlomi Fish wrote: > after two non-consecutive days of a concentrated effort (I was really > in the > mood for it) I mostly finished working on the "How to start > contributing to or > using Open Source Software" document: > > http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/How_to_start_contributing_to_or_using_Open_Source_Software > > Now I'd like to write a finale, and naturally get some people to > review it, > but otherwise I'm pretty happy with it. Comments would be welcome.
I lurk on this list, but your article has inspired me to make a post. Maybe I have not properly understood your article, please correct me if I am totally off track. In the section: 'Choose some Projects to Contribute to', I feel the orientation is not correct. In my experience, and from observation I find that sustained long term contributors to a project almost invariably come from people who start out as users of the project/app. They find something they do not understand and come on to mailing lists or IRC to solve their problems. Depending on the reception from the community, they either stay or move on. When they stay, sometimes it is just at the level of asking - and possibly answering questions. (Note that even asking a question is contribution in so far that it shows the developers that the documentation may not be enough or the work flow may be obscure.) And then some people start filing tickets and patches or translating strings or correcting documentation. At all times the driving motivation is that one is *using* the application and *needs* these changes. It is very rare to find a non-user as a contributor. And it is very common that even major contributors move on when they stop using the application. FOSS is one of the fields where there is no real distinction between a user and a contributor - two sides of the same coin. Misunderstanding of this point leads to a lot of rancour, when people go around trying to 'grade' or 'rate' contributors - code is king kind of stuff. Where a person contributes for the sake of contributing or 'giving something back to the community', this is usually short lived and frankly of not much use as a without an itch, scratching just creates wounds. just my two paise -- regards Kenneth Gonsalves _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
