How can I get involved in Open Source Development ?

[smokyink]

Hello :P
I have used linux for about two years now... and I am a student in Informatics.
Currently I know two programming languages : C and Java.

So basically as the title says I would like to get involved in Open source development, but I have no idea where to start and to what degree I can help...

I would like to ask for an advice on the subject....

Any Ideas about projects that I could join ?
Or any way that I can contribute ?

[utilitytrack]

Very well. You are welcome: http://kernel.org/

We with you both know about thousands of bugs wich need to be fixed: click (https://bugzilla.kernel.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&short_desc=&long_desc_type=substring&long_desc=&cf_kernel_version_type=allwordssubstr&cf_kernel_version=&bug_status=REOPENED&bug_status=VERIFIED&emailassigned_to1=1&emailtype1=substring&email1=&emailassigned_to2=1&emailreporter2=1&emailcc2=1&emailtype2=substring&email2=&bugidtype=include&bug_id=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&cmdtype=doit&order=Importance&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=)

You feel free to choose any interested for you subsystem (I/O, memory, networking, virtualization, all kinds of drivers, and so on). Any help would be useful: bug reports, patches, testing. In addition, I think to deal with Linux kernel internals it's best way to learn C :)

For more info what's going on in kernel now, look in here: http://lkml.org/

[smokyink]

That looks great ! I don't know why it didn't occur to me to look at the kernel development XD Thanks :)

[utilitytrack]

Perfectly! I had good thoughts... Torvalds will thank me :))

[Spice Weasel]

https://launchpad.net/

https://code.google.com/

Find a project you like, then download its source code and contribute patches for bugs and features that are on the "Issues" (http://code.google.com/p/wbar/issues/list) list. Maybe they will get implemented!? :) This way, you help other people and yourself because you can work with other people to add features that people want added, or bugs that need to be fixed.

[Lucradia]

Not mistake it for On-Screen Display?

Just sayin'

[smokyink]

Not mistake it for On-Screen Display?

Just sayin'
I don't quite understand what you mean man... did you post in the wrong thread or sth ?


https://launchpad.net/

https://code.google.com/

Find a project you like, then download its source code and contribute patches for bugs and features that are on the "Issues" (http://code.google.com/p/wbar/issues/list) list. Maybe they will get implemented!? :) This way, you help other people and yourself because you can work with other people to add features that people want added, or bugs that need to be fixed.

That sounds good as well... though I noticed that one can only browse projects on the launchpad site and not code.google. Does that mean that one usually looks for a project on Launchpad and then searches it in google to get the code ?

I still haven't found any projects that seem interesting to me this way but,
since there is often a lot of interaction between programs there should be API's right ?
Is there some official website which describes these or does one just look in the related project pages/wikies ?

[Lucradia]

I don't quite understand what you mean man... did you post in the wrong thread or sth ?

Open-Source Development = OSD = On-Screen Display

:)

[ibuclaw]

There are a few ways you can go about it (starting from hardest):

Start a new project.
Revive a dead project.
Get involved in a project you are passionate about.
Get involved in a distribution's development process.


For the latter point. If you are really into Ubuntu, I suggest you have a look at Ubuntu's bug triaging/patch reviewing process. It's a nice place to get your feet wet, and get friendly with a lot of software out there.

[smokyink]

Open-Source Development = OSD = On-Screen Display

:)

:lolflag: now I get it. tnx for clarifying :P