How To Contribute To Open Source Without Being a Programming Rock Star

Posted by Soulskill on Monday March 12, 2012 @06:30AM from the step-one-become-a-programming-rock-star dept.

Esther Schindler writes "Plenty of people want to get involved in open source, but don't know where to start. In this article, Andy Lester lists several ways to help out even if you lack confidence in your technical chops. Here are a couple of his suggestions: 'Maintenance of code and the systems surrounding the code often are neglected in the rush to create new features and to fix bugs. Look to these areas as an easy way to get your foot into a project. Most projects have a publicly visible trouble ticket system, linked from the front page of the project’s website and included in the documentation. It’s the primary conduit of communication between the users and the developers. Keeping it current is a great way to help the project. You may need to get special permissions in the ticketing system, which most project leaders will be glad to give you when you say you want to help clean up the tickets.'" What's your favorite low-profile way to contribute?

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Re:The most needed thing... by JoeMerchant · 2012-03-12 06:59 · Score: 4, Interesting

Yeah, man, like we're a semi-pro-football club, members have all been playing for 10+ years and we've all been on the team together for 3 or more, and there's lots of people who want to play with us because we totally kick ass, and man like, thanks for showing up, you know, why don't you start off our next game?
If you want to contribute code quickly, think about joining a smaller project, or even reviving an interesting looking dead one.
If you want to be a part of something big and high profile, be prepared to work the bottom of the bug list, or do some documentation.