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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 25 2017, @05:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the changing-your-point-of-view dept.

Snoyberg's The Do's and Don't's of Running an Open Source Project:

Real title should be: how to get members of any open source community to be interested in helping you. But the given title is catchier.

There's an old "ha ha, only serious" joke. If you go to a Linux forum and ask for help fixing your WiFi driver, everyone will ignore you. If, instead, you say "Linux sucks, you can't even get a f*&$ing WiFi driver working!" thousands of people will solve the problem for you.

This story is a great example of manipulating people, but it's obviously a negative take on it. I'd like to share some thoughts on this from a much more positive standpoint, which will help you get people to pay more attention, be more helpful, and—perhaps most importantly—create a healthier open source community over all.

These items will appear in no particular order, and will almost all fall into either the attractor or obstacle category. An attractor is something you can do to make people want to participate with you. An obstacle is something you should not do, which would prevent people from interacting with you.

And it should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: this is an opinionated list, written by one guy. I'm including in here things that I personally care about, and things which friends and colleagues have shared with me. No example is specific to any individual, so don't think I'm calling you out: I'm most certainly not. And some people may disagree, or have other items for this list. Sharing such differing thoughts would be very healthy.

The list:

  • Don't waste people's time
  • Demonstrate you've tried
  • Help other people
  • Don't be rude
  • Say thank you
  • Admit if you're new
  • Offer to help
  • Give money

Saying, "Lennart Poettering sucks" is not on the list of recommendations.


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  • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday October 25 2017, @05:45AM (18 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @05:45AM (#587285) Homepage Journal

    I keep thinking I ought to get into some open-source project. I'm a programmer, I'd like to think a good one. Just as an example, a couple of weekends ago I got bored, so I implemented a (very simple) digital currency, just for fun. Not a huge project, but not bad for a weekend's work.

    The question I can't seem to get past is: how and where? You have big projects (Linux, LibreOffice) where it would take years of effort to really work one's way into the project. Or you have projects so specialized that maybe 10 people in the whole world will ever care about them, and I'm not one of them. Or you have projects where - when you look into the community - you realize that you really don't want anything to do with them.

    Any tips on finding an interesting project, not massively huge, but still meaningful, where the community is focused on the tech and not on politics?

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    Starting Score:    1  point
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    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @05:50AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @05:50AM (#587286)

    Open Source software is about scratching your own itches; you're asking people where you should be scratching.

    Also, you sound like more of a hacker than a programmer. Getting something cobbled together isn't that interesting; script kiddies can do that. What matters is whether your work is fundamentally sound—whether it's beautiful not only now, but for the rest of time.

    • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:02AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:02AM (#587289)

      What matters is whether your work is fundamentally sound—whether it's beautiful not only now, but for the rest of time.

      Cool story, bro. You are fucking hilarious. According to your unrealistically high standard of code beauty, Randall Munroe is Not A Real Programmer, and we all know that is simply horseshit.

      Here is proof, conveniently linked to explainxkcd for you because you are an idiot.

      https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1296:_Git_Commit [explainxkcd.com]

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:07AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:07AM (#587290)

        Chill out, bro.

        Nobody has yet made it to the stars, but it's important to aim for them; it's not enough to fly Cessnas on the weekend.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:31PM (1 child)

      by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:31PM (#587381) Homepage Journal

      In a different comment thread someone wrote: "most support forums have a nasty streak that's really, really offputting"

      I waited several hours to reply to this comment, because I was curious to see what responses it might generate. The comment I'm replying to is a perfect example of that. Rather than addressing my question, AC says: "you sound like more of a hacker than a programmer"

      In fact, I am accustomed to doing solo projects, or at most projects with one other person. However, this includes things like complete ERP systems (yes, plural. Yes, sold to real customers, and supported over many years). So the offhand insult "you're just a hacker" is annoying, but it absolutely typifies what I said about some projects I have looked into: Who wants to deal people like that?

      At least if I'm programming solo, there's only one jerk involved :-/

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:54PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:54PM (#587421)

        So what? I bet your work does stink, like most proprietary crap.

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @05:57AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @05:57AM (#587288)

    Since you say you are a programmer you are supposed to have a natural uncontrollable urge to fix bugs in software you use. Pick some bug fixes that you surely have written by now and try to contribute your fixes back to the maintainers. Find out your software is maintained by an exclusive club of elitists who will ignore you. Give up on programming and retire to a life of trolling the shit out of stupid fuckheads on news-for-troll forums.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:43AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:43AM (#587302) Journal

    Any tips on finding an interesting project, not massively huge, but still meaningful, where the community is focused on the tech and not on politics?

    Start with tools/utils/libraries you know had helped you before (but there was an itch along the way, could be made smoother or have some extended functionality) or one that you'd love to have used but it wasn't usable when you needed it.

    (without info on prog-langs, I certainly can't offer examples. With that info, I may be able to offer examples but again I may not be able)

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:57AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:57AM (#587303)

    It's actually simple. Pick a piece of software that you actually use (there is more open source software on your system than you actually are aware of). E.g. lots of libraries used today are open source. Check out their project site and sign up to their mailing list (if any), and contact the people in that project asking them where you can help. They will point you in the right direction.
    Some projects also have summer of code projects, which might have not been all assigned. These are entry level sub-projects that are great to get you started (they often have also a mentor, who can help to get you started).

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @07:28AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @07:28AM (#587304)

    look at scipy (www.scipy.org) and children (numpy, matplotlib, etc).
    those are python with a lot of C and possibly fortran in the back.
    extremely useful.
    with numpy for instance, I see a lot of warnings when I compile it, I guess that's something that anyone can try to fix.
    I don't know if they enter the "massively huge" category.

    if you like C++, see if you can help with vtk (www.vtk.org).
    this one is, probably, massively huge.
    but they need better examples and documentation.
    in fact vtk also has wrappers in various scripting languages, maybe you can help with converting examples from C++ to the scripting languages.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @08:38AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @08:38AM (#587309)

    Hi bradley13 - please can you FIX the cross referencing bug in LibreOffice. If somebody doesn't do it THEN I AM GOING BACK TO MICR$$$OFT Word. Need any more ideas?? I got plenty.

    • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:39PM

      by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:39PM (#587386) Homepage Journal

      LibreOffice is one candidate that I am seriously considering. It is something I use, and has problems I would like to see fixed. The only reason I haven't jumped in is: it is definitely "massively huge", and will take a long time to work into...

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 25 2017, @11:52AM (1 child)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday October 25 2017, @11:52AM (#587330) Homepage Journal

    You're always welcome to show off your chops here until you find something that tickles your fancy a bit more. We may do politics out on the site but they're utterly irrelevant to coding. No political opinion is going to turn an O(2N) perl sub into O(N) or vice versa.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:41PM

      by bradley13 (3053) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @02:41PM (#587387) Homepage Journal

      Thanks for the offer! I haven't done any sort of web-oriented development for a long time, but I'll certainly consider it.

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:14PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:14PM (#587339) Journal

    What holds me back is pay. Contributing is hard, but easier than getting paid to contribute.

    What little free time I have I prefer to do research. Which I'm not getting paid for either, but rather write snippets of code for that than monkey with someone else's tedious and boring code, if it's all charity work on my part anyway.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @01:10PM (#587349)

    "Or you have projects so specialized that maybe 10 people in the whole world will ever care about them, and I'm not one of them"

    That just means you haven't found the right project. I've been of the same view for several years. Finally I found a guy who wrote a paper on a software project where I read it and said, "Yes! Somebody else gets it!".

    He's gone off-line since and I was never able to get in touch with him. Which probably has something to do with my government bombing the fuck out of his country. I remain hopeful he will surface again.

    God save us from the righteous.

  • (Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Wednesday October 25 2017, @09:11PM

    by Fluffeh (954) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 25 2017, @09:11PM (#587570) Journal

    THe things I get involved in are always software that I use. Sometimes (actually, most times) the projects I get involved in are just the small applications that I think would be great if they just had this "one extra bit" or if they already have something, but it's hard or non-intuitive to use. I try to make things more user friendly. That's my little contribution.

    It's surprising how often the original developers don't go back and make sure new additions to their code are integrated well for someone who is installing it for the first time.

  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday October 26 2017, @12:54AM

    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 26 2017, @12:54AM (#587651) Homepage Journal

    What is most lacking with most open-source/libre software is documentation. So take some software that you figured out how to use despite the documentation or lack thereof, and start to write the documentation you wish had been available.