Big reporters/Testers deserve some props as well. Testing the code on a variety of different situations is how software gets stable, and I can't do that myself. And properly and concisely describing a bug or glitch is usually the key to getting it resolved quickly.
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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And properly and concisely describing a bug or glitch is usually the key to getting it resolved quickly.
Often the most difficult part of solving it is being able to reproduce it / find the exact situation in which the problem occurs.
People who write documentation, tutorials, and offer help to newbies are also important. We as a community really need to highlight that you don't need to be a coder to contribute to open source. We should set examples how sharing of knowledge is just as important.
Hmm. I have been moving towards more and more open source. But my ability to code is very limited. Is there any kind of guide on how to get involved when you can't code?
Bug reporting and doco are both very useful, and mostly don't require coding ability. If you find a bug, report it. Use as much detail as you can, ideally with instructions to replicate the bug. "XYZ doesn't work" is useless, "XYZ will crash when used with a invalid file, file to replicate is attached" is gold. Working out exactly what detail is an art, but the more detail you give the Dev, the more chance they have to solve it quickly and easily.
If you struggled to set something up and the documentation wasn't clear, update it. Devs are notoriously bad at writing docs, and most will accept doco PR. (I repeatedly walk people through the setup of my project, because the docs are out of date and I'm too lazy/busy to update them. If someone does this for you, write it down, and see if you can insert it into their docs for them). Anything you do to help new users (which saves the Dev time), is a net positive.
Lastly, coding may seem daunting, but there are tons of resources, and many (but not all) Devs are happy to advise/mentor. Adding small features (button to do X) may be very easy. Some Devs will happily walk you through it if you ask (some may not, depends on the Dev).
https://www.browserstack.com/guide/how-to-write-a-bug-report
https://www.writethedocs.org/guide/writing/beginners-guide-to-docs/
Thank you! This really does point me in the right direction.
And as an aside, I absolutely love how welcoming the open source community is.
Oh, absolutely, didn't think of them. My personal experiences have been with good bug reporters, which is why I focused on that, but really anything that takes the load off the Dev is a net positive.
Indeed. The people who are active testers are people I respect immensely.
I use custom ROMs on my devices and it always surprised me, just how much people help out. It's really really amazing.
I think that one of the structural change that helped a lot to have less stalled or unmaintained open source projects is the improvement in the DevOps tools.
I mean that, until recently, I always had been an open source user and supporter but, despite being a professional software engineer, I never coded in open source projects. The reason to this is that I did not wanted to commit myself into a project that I cannot afford to work regularly on because of professional and/or personal time constraints.
Now with the broad use of git and related platforms for open source projects (GitHub, gitlab, ...), it's possible to work only a little on open source projects. You can fix a bug impacting you as an user, translate some strings in your native language, improve the doc, ... without commiting to work regularly on the project. You just change the stuff, have no requirements to inform anyone, make a pull request and it's merged or not by the maintener ...
I think this is really what contributed to improvement in the way open source projects evolved.
This is how I was able to contribute to a major Python library on GitHub. Their CI and test coverage was impressive, and ensured my little bug fix won't break everything for the many users of the library.
The community effect is massive!
🙌 I’d like to give thanks too. It’s because of open source developers, that I was able to learn computer science fundamentals at a young age, without spending a dime. Some contributors have gone out of their way mentoring a pixelated avatar that beamed countries away.
I feel it’s my duty to give back in the same way. If it weren’t for those projects/strangers back then and today I wouldn’t be able to have the skills necessary to turn my absurd thoughts into realities that I can take comfort in.
I am very thankful for Lemmy’s dev teams and this whole experiment around federation overall. As I feel reminded about what truly matters again. And why I got into engineering in the first place.
Some contributors have gone out of their way mentoring a pixelated avatar that beamed countries away.
This is the biggest takeaway here. This community is beautiful and generally speaking, lovely and friendly. Love you guys. ❤️
I propose to declare one day a year as Open Source Day. Something like the Sysadmin-day. It's about time that the open source contributors finally get the recognition they deserve.
It's about damn time!
Id rather they get paid, but hey, a pizza once a year is cool too.
As an open-source developer and maintainer (and as someone about to open-source another project) and tester too, you're welcome :)
I enjoy writing and maintaining open-source, it's fun for others to be able to download and play around with the sources.
Being a maintainer / project owner is not always fun, but it's rewarding in a sense that you're able to offer something useful to others.
I don't like providing free support via github issues. And that's usually what happens, you don't get many developers that put care into bug reports. Instead it's mostly users that don't really understand, sometimes entitled, sometimes really nice but completely wrong.
However I really appreciate those that do care or at least follow the template and make an effort.
I see issues as a form of a necessity to help the software improve, but I've chosen to no longer pay too much attention to it because it's just draining.
Support is draining, and I respect everyone who does it, those who provide support for free even moreso.
Oh that's awesome! What stuff have you been involved in? Anything you'd like to share? 🙃
You can check my GitHub https://github.com/ipkpjersi it should have my projects I have contributed to and maintain
Will take a look
Edit: I can't understand shit but clearly it's fun stuff 😄
Reminder to (if you can afford it) donate to your fav FOSS apps, they deserve your support :)
Absolutely! I'm saving up for a small personal fund of sorts that I'll use to donate to projects that intrigue me.
Not everybody can code, so donors giving their hard earned cash also deserve credit, some projects (for example godot ) can hire multiple full time people due to it, and that can include jobs that don't get a lot of open source contributors like UX people.
Godot is insane. Blender too! These projects make me feel a sense of pride in our community that I don't really qualify to feel, but these people keep making me feel it anyway.
Well done yo!
I really hope Godot becomes the Blender of game engines in the future
Yes!
There's this new video editor I saw someone working on. Olive or something I think.
Really amazing progress!
Same with Natron, the FOSS Video Compositing Software, like After Effects.
Plus plus, Penpot, the Figma alternative. I'm waiting for the desktop app.
I'm so pumped for the future of Open Source Projects. 🎉🫠🎉🫠
I agree. I'm very grateful to OSS developers. I use almost exclusively OSS software every day at this point, and it wouldn't be possible without the countless people devoting countless hours of their valuable time to these projects.
So, a question to devs, especially for smaller, more approachable projects: I have a minor (plus a bit more) in CS, a lifetime of casual coding, but never really built anything larger-scale than a C-based sh-like shell in one of my CS courses, or many years ago an IRC front-end for a chatbot engine. Mostly I just write scripts (sometimes kinda complex), or small C/C++ projects. I would try to contribute to a project directly, but I don't want to step on toes, and most projects have people who are deeply intertwined in the code of the project. It feels impossible to get involved in any way other than testing without possibly just annoying people who have been doing it for years. I've known enough intimidating grizzled *nix guru people to make me paranoid that I'll just get in the way.
How do you get a foothold in a project? Should I just start with creating my own OSS project, and once I get somewhere where I'm familiar with the flow and project management and such, then I can consider contributing more to other projects?
Or is it really more helpful to the community to just test stuff, create documentation, answer questions, etc? Would becoming another dev be more helpful to OSS, or would working on supporting projects in these other ways be more helpful?
I have zero coding experience but I'd LOVE to know as well.