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Re: Help wanted - new to open source


From: Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso
Subject: Re: Help wanted - new to open source
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:58:05 -0500

On 16 January 2012 15:39, Chris Pope <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hello.  My name is Chris and I want to get involved with Octave.  I am new
> to open source and will need some mentoring.  Will I be able to find
> assistance here, or is there somebody else I can contact with questions on
> getting started?

We frequently get this sort of request (I should probably write a FAQ
entry). If you already have a specific goal in mind, it is much easier
to get somewhere. I have seldom witnessed someone coming into a
project without a specific goal in mind and suddenly making useful
contributions, but it has happened recently, for example, Joanna Cheng
helped us get our new wiki together after asking what sorts of things
we needed help with.

I will probably write some version of this in our FAQ, but for now my
advice is:

    1) Use Octave. Use it a lot. Find what you like, find what you
       don't like. Get familiar with it. Ask questions on how to use
       it.

   2) Find something you think you could improve. It doesn't have to
      be code. It could be documentation, infrastructure, graphic
      design (for example for our webpage), community dynamics,
      helping on the mailing list.

      We have some suggestions here, but they're mostly about code,
      and they're probably problems you haven't encountered
      personally, so you would be less motivated to fix them yourself:

           http://octave.org/wiki/index.php?title=Projects

   3) Start working on whatever you have decided you want to improve.
      Ask questions. We have several avenues for communication. You
      seem to have found our mailing list, but if you prefer chat, we
      also have an IRC channel:

          http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/chat.html

Oh, one more thing. I am contractually obligated[1] to mention that
although Octave is open source, more importantly, it is also free.
"Open source" is a synonym for "free software" that tries to avoid
talking about software freedom.[2] Thus, you will not see us referring
to Octave as "open source" in its documentation or webpage (perhaps
some stray references in the wiki, but they shouldn't be there). I
invite you to think of Octave firstly as free and then as open source.

Welcome,
- Jordi G. H.

[1] ;-)
[2] http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html


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