What is your contribution to open source projects?

Question

I was always wondering about this seemingly utopic world of open source.

Assuming the vast majority of users here are professional software engineers which need some sort of income source, I assume most of us hold stable, money-making jobs.

So who are the key players in the open source community? Who are the people which devote their precious time to these projects? What is their benefit? Are the majority just people who see a bug, fix it, submit, and forget about the project? Or are they people constantly involved in the process of building the product?

How do you find yourself contributing to open source projects?

Answer 1

It's a lot about pride in something you do. Also gaining the confidence when code you do is accepted by peers.

After that initial phase, is a lot about being able to manage code builds and releases, suggesting new ideas and practicing your skills.

Some people in open source projects do them because they feel the freedom they do not get from work is liberating.

I personally try to contribute as much as i can, from documentation to bug fixes. That isn't to say i do much, but i like it when i can.

Answer 2

I earn all my living doing professional projects based on open source web framework (Aida/Web) which author and active contributor I am. The same goes more and more for others in our community as well. They are earning money and at the same time contributing back to the tool which actually enables them earning that money. The loop is therefore closed, to the benefit of all. I'm quite sure that such a model is the best for the open source and many other open source guys are following it as well.

Answer 3

I earn my living doing professional projects that are based on either open source frameworks or commercial products, and quite often a combination of both.

A lot of the commercial products I have used over the years end up being really very expensive in the end. Let's say you buy a Single-Sign-On solution for web apps. By the time you're finished with what you have to do, I and a lot of others have experienced that you end up re-implementing 2/3ds of it, and sometimes there's almost nothing left of the commercial product you thought you were going to use.

So the problem with buying stuff is that it never fits, and quite often the purchase decision is based upon function-matrices that compare features whilst not actually considering the suitability of those features in your own environment.

What I'm trying to get at is that mature organizations understand that there's no such thing as a free lunch, even after you paid for the product license. The fact that you spent $1M for a content management system does not mean you're not going to spend another $2M doing 50% planned and 50% unplanned activities related to that.

So we can, will and do write patches for all OSS projects we're involved with. Sometimes we rework subsystems, and most of the time we submit it back. Sometimes we decide we only want 50% of the framework and we just fork of the rest for ourself. But we still want to stay with the framework for that 50% which we use. Try doing that with a commercial product ;) In general we try to stay on the "developers " mailing list, but we seldom bother to get commit rights for the projects.

Answer 4

I have started my project because at that time I couldn't find any application that was what I had in mind. I have made it open source beacuse Sourceforge had an excellent infrastructure I was not willing to cope personally with.

I barely make enough with Google adsense to pay for the domain name and hosting, apart from that it was a lot of fun over the years. And a refreshing experience being in complete control of what you do, which is certainly not the case in my day job.

Answer 5

All my OS projects started as real business needs that needed to be satisfied. Once the job is done, I can release the applet or whatever to the public via Google Code. I haven't had anyone submit a bug report so far, and I doubt I ever will. Most of the things I post are fairly small but, hopefully, useful. Personally I don't beleive people who use OS software submit bug reports at all: they just go and donwnload something that actually works.

Answer 6

Are the majority just people who see a bug, fix it, submit, and forget about the project? Or are they people constantly involved in the process of building the product?

I definitely fall in the first category (focusing on a long term project is just not my thing) but there are plenty of people that are part of the second one. Without them we wouldn't have much of a viable Free Software ecosystem. A significant portion of these people are paid to write and maintain Open Source software but there are still a lot of hobbyists who do it just for fun. In fact, most people I know who are paid to work on Open Source software would still contribute if they had to do it for free (I certainly would). Contributions would just be less frequent.

How do you find yourself contributing to open source projects?

When I was a student I played with internals of various free/open source softwares (including gdb, OpenSSH, arping, some IRC clients, Snort, various Perl modules, some Debian specific packages things,...) and fixed some bugs as well as implementing a few features while doing so. Nothing big in term of SLOC and some of these contributions were rejected but it was still fun and interesting.

I co-founded a Free Software Users Group which has been running for over 4 years now. At meetings I sometimes give technical presentations about free softwares. We also try to regularly attend external events were LUG/FSUG are invited.

I also often buy T-shirts, sweaters and fluffs from projects I like as a mean to give them some financial contribution.

I am now doing technical support at an Open Source company and as such I report bugs and write fixes routinely. And they actually pay me for that. Why choose between contributing to Open Source and having a real job when you can do both?

Answer 7

I've been working exclusively on Open Source now for three years, in addition before that I did FOSS as "hobby projects". We're using our own Ra-Ajax to get consultancy gigs. This first of all makes it possible for us to create OSS which is very rewarding and fun! Second of all it create better tools for ourselves in addition to that we since we know the tools in and out often can charge better prices then if we were working with some "random thing" which "someone else made"...

Answer 8

My greatest contribution to open source projects has not been by contributing code to them, but by just actually using them.

Philosophically speaking, that is probably just as nearly as important to the health and utility of the project, actual users who submit feedback and leave suggestions and comments in daily conversation or in sites like this.

Answer 9

I do both.

I am not a "major player", but if I can help a little in improving a project that interest me, I do what I can, from adding a bit to the documentation, pointing out some possible improvements, fixing a bug, providing a patch.

I helped a bit to improve a PHP framework, for example. Sometime I provide or improve French translations.

There is at least a project in which I was (still am, although devoting much less time now) quite involved, Scintilla and SciTE (I am near the top of the chronological list of contributors in the SciTE credits). Of course, my main interest is to have an editor fitting my needs and tastes. That's the spirit of open source, to get contributions of people with a strong interest in the project.

I helped, but in the same time, I learned a lot, so it is a good deal for everybody.

Answer 10

How do you find yourself contributing to open source projects?

I think that, like programming itself, it has a lot to do with your passion and interests. If you are working on a project, or are interested in a topic, and find yourself needing a tool or a module that does X, go search it out. Chances are that there is at least one other person who has released an open source project that does it already. Depending on what you find you can:

1. Use a product and help the owner make it better via bug reports/fixes and feedback.
2. Improve on the product and submit your changes back to the owner.
3. Make your own product and release it as open source for others to do the first two with.

Chances are good that when you are first starting out that you won't become and overnight open source rockstar. Like the internet itself there is so much out there that you probably won't be noticed right away. However, just going through the process will teach you enough to make it worth while.

That is where I am. I have not made a name for myself in the open source community. I have learned the names of a handful of key players through reading blogs and just using the code, but that is really missing the point of open source. I have found some really great tools and have improved my knowledge and coding significantly, which is what is important to me.

In my experience, many people I have talked to see open source in one or more of the following ways:

1. A hobby for super hackers.
2. Something that people do for charity.
3. A source of free code examples.
4. A human right.
5. A place to find temporary solutions.

I see it as a great opportunity to learn, add tools to your toolbox, find out more about your industry and others in it and have fun all at the same time.

Answer 11

Well, I've started off an OS project on my blog to address some of the perceived shortcomings/process speedups in the Visual Studio XAML process. It's not 100% open source at the moment because I'm the only active developer on the project, but I have had people contribute source to the project which has been a fantastic incentive for me to continue developing it.

On a slightly different note, I've written applications and articles that have been posted on Code Project, so people are free to download them and use them as they see fit. My theory - if I've put it into the public domain, then it's free for you to use as you see fit; I don't want any money for it - that's not why I wrote the article.

Contributing to open source projects is a great way to hone skills that may not be in your main development set, so this is a really good way to improve your CV.

Answer 12

Reported bugs. Written articles. Answered questions on forums/IRC. Even started up my own OSS Project (Which I've handed over to someone else since)

Answer 13

I would really like to contribute to OS projects, however with three kids and a full-time job I never find myself with enough time to do anything but consume OS. Hopefully that will change sometime soon, but I do believe there are at least more than a handful of developers that are in the same boat with me.

Answer 14

Honest answer: Not much.

I've written a lot on my own, but I don't really consider that contribution. The most I've given to other projects is a few bug reports.

Answer 15

• Using it.
• Promoting it.
• Creating a tiny open source project (Natural CLI).

Answer 16

I pretty much active in an open source project named :

JStock - Free Stock Market Software

I can improve my $ncome (by using JStock to perform investment) and write code at the same time :)