Raiden's Realm: The open source principles of participation

The open source principles of participation (Page 1 of 1)

Written by Steve Lake
Posted on: Sep 12, 2008 at 02:46pm
Section: Editorials
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One of the greatest and most destructive beliefs in the open source community is that "Because I'm not a programmer, I can't participate in an open source project." Let me be the first to tell you that if you believe that, you're wrong. Dead wrong. Why? Well let me explain.

One of the age old principles of open source is the free and open sharing of software source code. That source code is the product of somebody's time, effort and labor. So trading or sharing source code is essentially sharing your work with everyone else, and in turn receiving a portion of their work in return. And since programmers and developers are what made traditional open source possible, it's easy to understand how people can equate participation in an open source project or community as requiring them to be able to program.

But times have changed, and open source isn't just about software anymore. Certainly that's still a large part of it, but there's so much more now that is called open source than ever before, and not all of it deals with software. There's lots of open source projects out there that don't require source code or software to be classified as an open source, or community project. Therefore, you no longer need to be able to code in order to participate. Actually, programming skills never were really a requirement for participation, but more a bonus skill.

A perfect example of this comes from a recent interview I did with Michael Shiloh of Open Moko. When I asked him about how people could participate in his project, he brought up a couple of very interesting examples of how people could participate without needing to know how to program. The first was a gentleman who came to the developers and said, "I'm a musician and I'd love to participate, but I don't know how to program." They immediately told him "Not a problem. We need people to write and record ring tones for us." which he could very easily do for them. Another example came from an artist who said more or less the same thing about himself, to which the developers said, "We could use someone to create icons and artwork for us."

And that's just two minor examples of ways that people could participate in an open source project and/or community. Another example came up in a different interview I read about where the lead developer of a major CMS manager was scouting the community looking for people who could write how-to's, guides, documentation, and other similar items for them. And if you are even halfway good at writing, doing any of those is very easy. I speak from experience on that.

Another example of ways to participate comes from my own site. There are several people on my site who have volunteered as editors and proof readers for a variety of articles and editorials over the past couple of years, offering me and others a second pair of eyes while writing and editing various articles, how-to's and more in order to produce the best end product. Many more have given their time to help others by either answering questions in the forums, writing guides, how-to's, providing artwork, feedback, critiques, and other things like that.

I in turn have volunteered with numerous other projects as well, doing everything from being a contributing programmer, to a UI designer, an editor, writer, teacher, and many more things. I've even written articles for Distrowatch (to help out while Ladislav Bodnar was away on vacation) as well as for numerous other sites beyond my own. I even helped for a short time with developing short musical soundfiles for a couple other projects. I myself can't write music and the number of instruments I can play is limited, however I do have a very sharp ear for tone, rhythm, structure, style, tempo and much more (despite having a partial hearing loss, this stuff is still very clear and easy to identify), and have worked with other musicians to develop and fine tune various musical sound files for different applications.

And I'm not saying this to toot my own horn. I'm just showing that you don't need to be some uber geek or a seasoned programmer to participate in an open source community or project. There are dozens, if not hundreds and thousands of ways you can participate in the open source world and help in some pretty amazing ways in the open source community using the skills you already have and the things you already know. Even my parents and a number of friends act as advisors for various communities and projects, providing their insights into how to better adapt different web and software interfaces for the elderly and infirmed.

And one last example. I had a gentlemen come to me one time and say he'd like to participate in a project I was working on, but couldn't program. It turned out he could speak two different foreign languages fluently and knew how to read and write in both of them, plus English. (He worked as a part time translator I believe.) I got the brilliant idea to have him work on translating all of our documentation and language files for us into those two other languages.

So don't ever feel that just because you're not a programmer that you can't ever participate in the open source world. And don't think that just because a project isn't software related that people don't need help either. There are plenty of examples where a project, like Project Guitenberg for example, either doesn't have programmers, or they're a secondary element of the project (like for website maintenance for example), rather than the primary. Linux and open source websites and communities the world over, and even locally, need people to help as well.

Here's another great example. Say you're good with marketing. There are a lot of good open source and Linux projects out there who need a lot of help with marketing. You could use your marketing knowledge and help them better market themselves. Now what if you're only good at cooking? Believe it or not, you can still be useful, because there are quite a few different ways you could participate, even with just that one skill. And never think that a particular skill you have is "not worth mentioning" because you feel it's silly or insignificant. You might be surprised how actually significant it may turn out to be.

Each project and community has different needs. Just because one community may not need your skills doesn't mean someone else won't. The same applies here as well. Just because we're a Linux and open source review and tutorial site doesn't mean you can't help out or participate. And I'm not just saying that to toot our horn or anything, but since you're reading this article, you've likely already noticed the "contributing writers" link at the top left side. That is a list of both staff and community members who have stepped up and volunteered their time and knowledge to write about Linux, provide distro and hardware reviews, editorials, tutorials and much more. They've stepped up and helped us time and again, and for that I'm forever grateful.

Now I admit I'm probably beating a dead cat by now with all that I've said, but the point remains that there are so many people out there who are more than capable of helping out at least one open source project, and yet do not. The core principles of open source are about sharing and giving. The open source community has given so much to you over the past two decades, whether you realize it or not. So what have you given back in return? If your answer is nothing, then it's time to change that. If it's a little, then it's time to increase your participation. But if it's a lot, then we thank you for all you've done and encourage you to continue giving.

In a perfect world, there shouldn't be a single project out there, other than those that are dead or dying for reasons other than lack of participation, that should *EVER* be hurting for volunteers. Now admittedly we don't live in a perfect world, but nothing says we can't try to make it one. All it takes is for each person to step out and do their part to help those projects and communities that they can. Because without people willing to volunteer and help, open source will die, and that's a future I never want to see.

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