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?"

Comments

Find project you like or use

[tokul]

Find project you like or use and start contributing. Or ask them if they need any help.

Re:Find project you like or use

[dotancohen]

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/

Re:Find project you like or use

[skids]

Seconded. You'll have at least a 50% hit rate as far as them needing help -- almost all projects want help, and about half are set up culturally and technically to take on new developers.

So pick the project first. If it doesn't need help, pick another. You'll find one soon enough.

Re:Find project you like or use

[buchner.johannes]

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.

Re:Find project you like or use

[Burz]

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'

stackoverflow

[Anonymous Coward]

stackoverflow features some user submitted ads for open source projects.

Sorta Kinda Maybe

[Cylix]

In the volunteer aspect it is more of a passion based decision than an recruitment oriented process. My advice is find something you both care about and also feel the site in question needs improvement. Next, simply hop on the forums or news feed and offer your services. It doesn't necessarily hurt to have some material already developed to get the discussion flowing.

Higher profile is probably going to be a bit more difficult so you may not want to go looking for the top 10 applications of all time. Those circles (even of volunteers) tend to be more work to edge your way into responsibility. Still, my experience has been very positive with contributions and generally working with a project I do not own. I had a good deal of fun one weekend with a BitPim developer banging out support for my phone.

If you need explicit areas where your talents could probably be used I highly recommend seeing if you can get the guys over at http://www.memtest.org/ to let you revamp their page. The program is nice, but the web page is atrocious.

Does anyone else have any suggestions for who needs a make over? (That could be a reality series television show!)

X.org

[siride]

Please someone help X.org. They need it pretty bad.

All of them

[ultrabot]

All open source projects are hiring - just find a program you like that has a bug or omission. If it's useful for your day job, even better.

idea

[larry bagina]

use your mad php/css/html/js skillz to make a website where people can find projects that need help.

Re:idea

[johne_ganz]

If I had any moderator points, you'd get them. I think this comment is more insightful than it appears at first glance. While I applaud the articles root authors desire to help an open source project, it is a slightly different way of approaching the problem. Maybe the best way the root author can help open source projects is to "meta-help" them- make it easier for open source projects that need help in areas that are beyond their skill sets to connect with people willing to provide that help. For example, in my open source project, I've got the programming, HTML, and documentation needs pretty much covered. However, I do need help with the following:

o Art. I can't draw stick figures. But I do need a few pieces of art such as an "Icon" in various forms and resolutions. Possibly a few "icons", such as a "represents the whole project", and an icon for different sub-projects (i.e., something like Mozilla -> Firebird, Thunderbird).

o Translation. It would be nice to do some internationalization. There's actually a few levels to this, as well. There's some relatively simple tasks, such as localizing approximately two dozen run time error messages, all the way up to a major undertaking like localization of the documentation.

There's obviously a few more high level categories that apply to most projects as well (porting, testing on platforms not readily available to the developers, etc). So, maybe some kind of "open source job site" where project owners can post "jobs" and include details like the type of license that is required for any contributions.

Re:idea

[Mike.lifeguard]

This is precisely what openhatch.org is for.

Openhatch

[Anonymous Coward]

This might be useful

https://openhatch.org/

Nolambar

Re:Openhatch

[Mike.lifeguard]

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.

How-To

[ddt]

Find a project with a mailing list where people are asking for a feature that is just below the radar, keeps getting put off because of more important things. Implement it, submit the patch, and pray. If no love, which is unfortunately common and even likely for new contributors, shoot video of the feature in action and send a letter out to the mailing list linking the video, and let them know where they can find the patch if they want it, start collecting and posting feedback on the patch from users.

Does it have to be coding?

[AnonymousClown]

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.

Re:Does it have to be coding?

[Anonymous Coward]

testing, writing testing scripts, and writing docs and help

Yes!

One of the biggest complaints about open source apps is the documentation. Everyone wants to code it, no one wants to document it.

OpenHatch

[Anonymous Coward]

Try OpenHatch, a website that catalogues bugs needing fixin' in loads of opensource projects.

LaunchPad

[Anonymous Coward]

https://launchpad.net/

Every Free Software project needs help.

[John Hasler]

And most realize it. Find a project that interests you. Start using it. Download the source and play with it. Subscribe to the mailing-lists/forums etc. Once you are comfortable and think you know what is going on start filing bug reports, submitting patches, and participating in discussions. Concentrate initially on the boring stuff nobody likes to do such as sorting through old bugs and cleaning up documentation. Eventually you'll be offered commit provileges.

Re:Every Free Software project needs help.

[pongo000]

But please do NOT show up one day with 50 new tickets explaining how a piece of software SHOULD have been designed, with proposals for a complete redesign. This happened recently on an F/OSS project I help with...while the guy's ideas were good, it was his manner of presentation that was off-putting. There is no way in hell I will give this guy commit privs with the gangbuster attitude he has. In fact, I politely suggested to him that a fork off our project might be better to suit his goals.

If you present yourself as a threat to the project's developers, you will never get commit privs, and most likely your suggestion will just end up in the "blue-sky" milestone. Constructive criticism has its place, but it's all in how you present it.

Free Software Job Listings

[fcanas]

you asked:

http://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs/listing

Re:Free Software Job Listings

[Yvanhoe]

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

pleaseforkme.com

[rbrant]

I created pleaseforkme.com with the intention of solving this problem..just haven't had time to get people into using it!

OpenHatch, an "open source involvement engine"

[paulproteus]

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:

• The volunteer opportunity finder, a listing of free software projects' "bitesized" buts, organized by project, language, or type of help wanted (e.g. writing documentation). We index thousands of bugs from hundreds of projects.
• The "I want to help!" button, a way to express interest in helping a project even if you don't know what to do. For an example, check out the people who want to help GNU social.
• Project pages like Gally's, where existing contributors have written about what kind of help they want.

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!

Here, have some links

[badpazzword]

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

Debian WNPP

[vlm]

Want to try your hand as sysadmin work?

Work-Needing and Prospective Packages

http://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/

Join Sahana!

[gmiernicki]

The Sahana Team would love to have some more hands! http://agasti.sahanafoundation.org/

Octave needs webdevs!

[Digana]

You're a webdev? I know you said you don't want to keep doing that, but what else are you happy doing?

Right now, GNU Octave is looking to rebrand itself and is starting a website to rival Matlab Central. The The Octave-Forge pages also need help, and a hot new designer star just recently came along who is helping us with logo and brand image design. His name is Fotios Kasolis.

You could do a lot of good if you got involved with us. Plus, Octave itself is interesting if you're into mathematics and numerical analysis.

TripleA

[CBung]

Learn some Java and come help TripleA, a wicked Java based strategy game engine. triplea.sf.net

No wonder

[Kjella]

Why would there be a "job" listing? There's in general no pay, no benefits. People that don't have any interest in the project as such but just want to tag their CV with it are usually more work than they're worth. Pick whatever open source project which is in a field you're interested in, where there's some itch you'd like to scratch, join the development mailing list and see what you can do. Sometimes there's merely the need to ask, one tool I worked with had a manual "coming soon" so I emailed and asked, spent 2-3 hours compiling one and it's still the one in use today. It's not like it takes interviews and they're afraid of bad "hires", anyone who seems reasonably independent and won't be a drag on everyone else is generally welcomed. Just remember you have a limited amount of handholding and try figuring out stuff on your own before asking about every little thing, you'll do fine.

OpenHatch, and the "Teaching Open Source" Wiki

[Shlomi Fish]

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!

VolunteerMatch

[bigjoeb]

VolunteerMatch is exactly what you describe

Not All of them

[rundgong]

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.

Burning Man

[bheerssen]

Burning Man is looking for developers to help with their open source projects. You can't get much cooler than that.

Good active F/OSS project list

[EvanKroske]

I recommend checking out the list of participating organizations in Google's Summer of Code program. http://socghop.appspot.com/gsoc/program/accepted_orgs/google/gsoc2010 All of the projects are active, legit and looking for new participants.