Contributing Code to an OSS project

[jtwJGuevara]

Question:

How many of you contribute code to an OSS project? This is more of a feeler question than anything. I do a medium amount of programming at my job, but often feel guilty that I do not contribute any of my skills whatsoever to an OSS project. I was just curious if there are others who are in the same boat, or if I'm the only selfish schmoe out here who just uses OSS and doesn't contribute to it.

For those of you who do contribute, what are some of the projects you have worked in? Have these been substantial contributions or just a bugfix here and there.

[Note: I'm not certain this is the correct forum for this question/discussion, but I placed it here since it is in the context of development. Please move if needed]

[X.Cyclop]

I've been translating to spanish some Open Source projects. I didn't learn any programming language yet (i'm still learning Bash...).

[maubp]

I've got a little involved in serveral projects which I was using myself.

I have contributed some documentation - examples or mini-tutorials.

I can and do program - mostly in Python but also C, C++ and I used to use VB 6.0 for work.

Usually I start by reporting bugs (trying to get a good test case) and getting stack traces etc where possible.

In some cases, I have also submitted small patches - getting one accepted is a good buzz.

I haven't got the time to get seriously involved in many projects - so I tend more to dabble here and there when I find a problem in a program I'm using.

[toojays]

I'm not listed as a developer for any Free Software project, but I have contributed patches to a few (alas, none recently). I keep a list of noteworthy patches and bug fixes I've been responsible for. It's not much, but it's something I can be proud of, and every little bit helps.

Speaking as a Free Software developer (and not an open source developer ), I don't feel that you are selfish for not making an effort to "contribute back". Different people have different priorities, and I know from my own experience that after hacking away all week, it's sometimes hard to continue to do serious programming on the weekend.

If you still feel a need to contribute back, you could always do it by donating money to a FSF or your favourite project, rather than spending your time.

One last thing (I could probably talk about this topic all day, but I'm trying not to): some projects need good documentation way more than they need new features. If you hack away on C all day at work and want to use different skills on the weekend, you might prefer to write DocBook or GNU Info documentation or man pages for an under-documentat project (and there sure are a lot of those).