Slashdot Mirror
Finding Open Source Projects Looking For Help?
aus writes "I've been doing web development for about 10 years now. It's been very good to me, but I want to do more than write HTML, PHP, JavaScript and CSS. Since the job market isn't all that great right now in the US, it would seem that volunteering some time on an open source project would give me the satisfaction I'm looking for. The problem is finding a project that wants/needs help that I would also be interested in. I've tried browsing around on Sourceforge and Freshmeat ... is there a site somewhere that I'm not aware of that has classifieds where open source project maintainers post 'job' listings?"
stackoverflow features some user submitted ads for open source projects.
Some of you FOSS guys chime in here and correct me, but I bet any and every project would welcome you if you offered testing, writing testing scripts, and writing docs and help.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Try OpenHatch, a website that catalogues bugs needing fixin' in loads of opensource projects.
https://launchpad.net/
Find project you like or use and start contributing. Or ask them if they need any help.
Most of the big ones do have "help us here" pages, such as KDE:
http://techbase.kde.org/Contribute
And another KDE page for those just starting out:
http://techbase.kde.org/Contribute/Junior_Jobs
So either the OP needs those links, or he is looking for smaller projects to help with. Here, let me suggest some small-project tools that I use that could use the help:
Anki, flash card application: http://ichi2.net/anki/index.html
Zim, desktop wiki: http://zim-wiki.org/
Gmail Conversation View for Thunderbird: http://github.com/protz/GMail-Conversation-View/issues
Vimperator/Muttator: http://vimperator.org/
Redshift, change screen colour per time of day: http://jonls.dk/redshift/
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
OpenHatch, a website I help run, exists to help people find ways they can contribute to free and open source software.
(It was covered on Slashdot a few weeks ago.)
We have a few things that you might like:
If you want to work on a project which has contributors in your area (maybe you want to get together for a hackathon, or to ask questions about how something in the code works), check out the ubiquitous People Map. You can see everyone on the site or browse by project or skill.
OpenHatch is itself free software, and we have a small and growing volunteer contributor base. (-:
Let us know what you do or don't like!
|/usr/games/fortune
FOSS advertisements currently running:
http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/53346/open-source-advertising-sidebar-2h-2010
FOSS advertisements that have run until recently (but probably still can do with some help):
http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/31913/open-source-advertising-sidebar-1h-2010-closed
When ideas fail, words become very handy.
Want to try your hand as sysadmin work?
Work-Needing and Prospective Packages
http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The Sahana Team would love to have some more hands! http://agasti.sahanafoundation.org/
OpenHatch was mentioned previously, but I'll mention it again for completeness sake. I'm now getting a "500 Internal Server Error from it." (Slashdot effect). Also, there's a list of projects with mentors on the "Teaching Open Source" wiki. Furthermore, as people noted, most open source projects could use some help and you can approach those that interest you.
Finally, touting my own horn, I'd like to note that I'm willing to mentor people with their first steps in my own open source projects. Hack on!
We have two eyes and ten fingers so we will type five times as much as we read. http://www.shlomifish.org/
VolunteerMatch is exactly what you describe
Just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you
All of them are not looking for help.
Not all open source software are open source because of the community collaboration aspect of it.
Some people just want to do their thing and work at it alone but for various reasons want to publish the source (ideological reasons, bragging rights, looks good on a resume, etc.)
I don't know how common this is, but it definitely exist.
Another reason a OSS project might not really be "hiring" is that it is half dead. It has a TODO list but it didn't make a release in a couple of years and there is no obvious activity that indicate another release is coming. If you are looking to make a meaningful contribution this is maybe not the project you are looking for.
OWASP always has projects going on all the time.
http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Category:OWASP_Project
On the same website, FSF lists what it identifies as the ten most important free software to complete :
http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/
I, for one, believe CoreBoot to be the most important of them
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
OpenHatch is pretty sweet, but it is fairly unknown at present. I've had only one bite and it didn't materialize into any help at all. I'm hopeful the project will expand into a useful resource for both potential contributors and the projects, but right now, it isn't so great.
This is precisely what openhatch.org is for.
Virtually any Bugzilla install has "love" bugs, e.g. Gnome Love, or bugs that are tagged in a similar way for new devs to dive in.
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Stackoverflow.com has an area where people can vote for projects that should receive additional help.
One of my favorites is asking for help: the Invisible Internet Project 'I2P'