tell me about your experience volunteering with open source software

[riverhawk]

Hi Ubuntu Forums,

I'd like to hear about other people's experience volunteering with open source software. Although I used Linux, GNU software and Perl/Python for many years, I had no luck when I tried to contribute. This is probably because I tried to contribute to too large projects and was just ignored. So I'd like to hear about other people's experience and, maybe, I'll get inspired again.

Thanks!

[guiverc]

I wanted to contribute to Debian... but ended up becoming involved with the Ubuntu project(s).

I wasn't getting very far with Debian, I forget specifics, my email requests to become involved I think wouldn't get replies. Anyway I had a Ubuntu system running on a laptop, and the screensaver when it kicked in, was always displaying the latest issue of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, which has a "Get Involved" section at the end of it.

I enquired about contributing to the UWN, and got a pretty quick response telling me how I could (help write summaries) which I started doing mid-2015. It was a very small team, in fact for much of the time I only interacted with one person, but soon two and more. One benefit of the Ubuntu_News team is it's a good means to learn more about Ubuntu as a whole.. I was on rare occasion interacting with other teams [members] (seeking clarification of some detail for example, typo etc) but was soon collecting articles, and more as outlined in my wiki page.

This led to some write access to some Ubuntu [News] sites, eventually I applied for my Ubuntu Membership (which was supposed to occur before I had many write access privileges actually; lack of Ubuntu membership isn't a barrier in my experience) and I added some work on other Ubuntu teams (testing Lubuntu & Xubuntu ISOs for example).

I was encouraged to apply for Lubuntu membership too, did & am a member there now as well. (possibly a smart move by Lubuntu people; I'd always halved my time between Xubuntu & Lubuntu until that point; it's now >90% Lubuntu)

As I become more involved with teams, my interaction with others involved with the many Ubuntu (and flavor) projects increased, as did my enjoyment of it all.

If I get an email from a person I don't know, associated with some other team, it's easy to look up their name via their wiki page, launchpad page (even non-Ubuntu pages like GitHub). Once you've got some details you can put on your own such page (esp. links to a Ubuntu related project), it's easier for everyone you interact with.

On reaching 200 contributions to UWN, I asked (again) to become involved with the Debian project, this time however a couple of days later I got an email telling me I had Developer access to the project.. I suspect it was the fact that now I have some credentials (Ubuntu wiki page, launchpad page etc), though that's just my guess.

I do also know that if I ask questions on IRC in certain rooms, asking for something, these days I'm likely to get a response giving me at least what I asked for, if not far more (the community aspect is great!; an example is I ask about a problem in a specific team room, I've often got replies from different-team members that just happened to be [lurking] in that room providing far more insightful answers to my question, or confirming my issue as well (something I would likely have needed to do later); this occurs semi-regularly, and I'm impressed when its from the wider Ubuntu community, and not just the team I was asking the question of. The community aspect is great!

I'll also have learnt how to ask questions, learnt more about when to ask (eg. on IRC I tend to think about what the time is in Europe, or the US, far more than my local aussie timezone; and have a feel for when it's likely to have the best responses, even if it's a team I'm not involved in as it doesn't take long to work out the likely best time people will be online via quick scans on launchpad, ubuntu wiki etc).

I'll suggest, as likely others will too, to try and offer doing things you like to do.

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do (it sure wasn't writing summaries which felt like school-homework initially), but it was something I felt I could do; ie. a start... and I found I liked it, especially the community part of it.. so I'm still doing it, now ~5.5 years later. fyi: it no longer feels like school work

[GhX6GZMB]

I've had 100% miserable results trying to contribute to open source software, and am now content to sit back and just reap the harvests (which is not how it should be).

I'm not a programmer, but an electronics engineer, and wanted to improve the KiCAD libraries.
I got sent to GitHub, which is the worst piece of **** geekiness I've ever seen. I asked questions about this at the KiCAD website and was told:
"Oh, we moved to GitLab half a year ago."
Right.
I then tried GitLab instead. Exactly the same very strange functionality that's intended to scare everyone but the inner circle away.
I gave up.

I then thought that I might share some of my experiences with Lubuntu from a user's point of view on a Lubuntu forum.
Wrong.
It did not take very long before I kept being attacked by an "experienced user" that apparently has an autistic streak.
Requested that my account be deleted,and this also happened finally, although there's no webmaster, no contact email or anything, and all received emails lead to "noreply" adresses. The only option was going public on the forum

In short: I'm out of trying to contribute to OSS. Not due to the above experiences, but because no one is responsible. And there's nobody to get in touch with. The OSS actors are shrouded in anonymity, where it's not even possible to send a message.
I believe in communication. OSS apparently does not.

I have plenty of accounts on engineering forums (with webmasters!) where people really help each other, and I contribute happily there, but the OSS community apparently ticks differently.

[TheFu]

My first contribution was some C code to an ODBC driver manager. I'd been communicating with the multi-company group for a few months, so it was accepted and used for a few years before they decided to scrap the project and start over.

I moved off into a role where I was under legal contract which prevented me from doing or discussing any outside work for about a decade.
Then I became active in our metro area LUG, initially presenting, then as one of the organizers.
Then I became active in different forums.

[Perfect Storm]

My contribution have always writing tutorials/guides: https://eos-techs.com/
Or artitstic contributions (my own projects): https://github.com/SethStormR

[Hagar Delest]

Interesting question!
Even if I use GNU/Linux (various distros) since 2002, I really discovered opensource when I started using OpenOffice.org. After some questions I asked on the oooforum (very successful at that time but no longer online), I enjoyed the spirit of the helping community. I ended as a power user in that forum and helped create the new one (https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php with its native language variants).
I also tried Ask.libreoffice last year but after 15 days I deleted my account because of lack of fairness from another power user. I help because I like it but if it means that you've to suffer the behavior of others, no way.
As you've understood, I contribute by helping others, I'm no coder at all.

In the end, it deals very much with human values, especially with your ego. Once you belong to a community, you can have words with others, that's conceivable. However, if you feel rejected or not welcome at first, then you'll move on. Quite natural. Look at the Apache OpenOffice / LibreOffice communities for example (my analysis based on what I saw on the AOO mailing lists): the Apache rules and the initial core community were not that welcoming IMHO, whereas the LibreOffice project offered the inclusiveness that many coders or would-be coders were looking for. Years later, AOO is moribund and LO thriving (even if there were also other factors IMHO, more linked to the conduct of a project).

We all want to be part of something, our ego needs to be recognized. Thus it heavily depends on the community you want to join and how it is willing or prone to include new members. It might be part of the "initiation": find the right way to join the community, a kind of selection process.

[riverhawk]

Thanks everyone for the replies! I appreciate hearing about everyone's experience. And, by the way, @TheFu I did run xman and saw the window.

After I posted, I realized I had a few experiences with trying to contribute with OSS. Funniest is when I posted an idea to the python-ideas@python.org mailing list and actually got yelled at by Guido van Rossum himself. Seems he was in a bad mood about previous posts and I just posted at the wrong time. Later, I sent him a private email and he was very nice in reply.

I had a two or three month experience with Debian, which started very good and ended badly. I got pushed as some type of leader on some small project that everyone else lost interest in. This ended up with me feeling a bit foolish and leaving discouraged. But I wouldn't blame Debian, just my experience with a very small subset of people. If anyone is interested in volunteering with Debian, I'd suggest posting to various dev mailing lists. There are so many, so it's a trick to post to several to find the right one. Also, working on the Debian Wiki.

Also, after reading through the replies, I realized there are many ways to support OSS other than programming, for example writing documentation, contributing artwork or providing support through the forums.