How Can I Contribute To Open Source? 332
rtobyr writes "I work for a state government agency. That means we can't donate money, because it's a 'gift of public funds.' I had the idea to put up a Web page stating that we 'use the following free software to save tax dollars,' as a way to help spread the word about open source software, but management calls this an 'endorsement.' A mirror server is a no-go as well. I'm certainly not a talented enough programmer to help with development. I've donated $10 here and there out of my own pocket, but I'm hoping you Slashdotters have some creative ideas about how my organization could give something back to the teams that create free software we benefit so much from."
Pay for your free licenses (Score:5, Insightful)
Buy support. Pay for your Linux licenses. Just because it's open source doesn't mean that you should pay $0.
By buying from a legitimate open source company, you help reinforce the open source eco-system.
And it's all legitimate: it's not a donation, so your boss shouldn't object. You are still saving a lot of money compared to buying a proprietary solution, but you are helping people who code full-time sustain themselves. Let's face it, developers are the critical resource for most open source projects.
PS: some cool startups are looking for extra developers/founders [fairsoftware.net]: help people go solar, build a better bug collector tool, or help build a music community that supports its bands.
Write documentation or contribute art (Score:5, Insightful)
Many FOSS projects need lots of help on the documentation and art assets.
"Contributing" is impossible (Score:2, Insightful)
Metrics (Score:3, Insightful)
Documentation and boxed CDs! (Score:5, Insightful)
At $JOB-- (public university), we had a pair of redundant firewalls running OpenBSD that saved us thousands, and made us very happy.
It was easy to get approval to buy the OpenBSD CD sets with each release. It was only a few hundred dollars over the course of several years, cheap for us, and better-than-nothing for Theo et al.
Check to see if the devs have any documentation (O'Reilly books, pay PDFs, etc) for sale. This is another good place to kick in a few bucks, documentation is a legitimate expense and worthwhile investment.
What bothers me is that some companies (eg ZenOSS) make support SOOOO expensive when you jump from the open-source to commercial version. The price jump for a small business is insane, especially if they're fine without 24/7 support and the features they have already.
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
But you have a job to do -- don't risk it by challenging your boss.
Maybe it's just the person you are, but I think you're flat out wrong. Putting your head down and just doing your job instead of making a persuasive argument and showing the benefits is simply pathetic (especially at a government job, where it's typically much more difficult to get fired/laid off). Before working for myself, I've challenged bosses before when I thought a decision was grossly incorrect (don't quibble over little stuff), and have even gone above them before with less than horrible results (once got a raise, once got my boss' job). Not to go too far off-topic though, going through life never challenging those above you is.....no way to go through life.
Re:Write documentation or contribute art (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what I came here to post. Since you've already done that, I'll add that the submitter can also participate in forums or wikis devoted to FOSS software he uses; beta test new releases; attend LUG or other user group meetings; help spread the word to other potential users of FOSS and teach his kids/nieces & nephews/whatever young people he may encounter in life that there are alternatives to proprietary software.
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it's just the person you are, but I think you're flat out wrong.
You're entitled to your opinion, but I'm speaking from a decade of experience in the field.
Putting your head down and just doing your job instead of making a persuasive argument and showing the benefits is simply pathetic
He made his argument. He lost. Move on. Pressing the issue will only irritate management. It's not business-critical and it's not impacting his professional reputation. If it was, then appeal to upper management and/or write a CYA letter informing them of the consequences if your professional recommendation is not followed.
You admit that you don't quibble over little stuff. This is pretty minor -- his job is IT and while his aims are noble he hasn't been asked to represent his employer. That's somebody else's job. You have to recognize the limitations of your job function and work within them -- that's not putting your head down, that's being a professional and doing your job.
Documentation? (Score:4, Insightful)
First, ask the open source project where they need help. If all else fails, you could learn how to write documentation for the project. Helpful documentation is notoriously bad for projects that are too focused on the internals without an outside view.
Re:"Contributing" is impossible (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I'm saying he should do this, especially if his boss has already told him not to, but it isn't taking his neighbors car and letting someone else have it. If approved it would be a government agency using your tax dollars and putting them to use to support the purposes of that government agency. This whole taxes equal theft thing has just gotta stop. Yes, taxes can go too far, lord knows I pay enough of them. If the agency he works for thinks that the best way to fulfil their objectives is with a donation to open source projects, that isn't theft, it's government.
Re:"Contributing" is impossible (Score:5, Insightful)
where of course you assume that the person who had the money in the first place really deserved to have it. but a lot of persons today earn money without doing any useful work (e.g. they work for advertisment - creating artificial needs) or by doing harmful work (creating weapons, destroying the environment, etc...) or doing no work at all (just cashing in on their portfolio). the reason why some can earn a lot of money for nothing is in our system of society. this is an artificial system of laws and rules and it allows some to take the money from other persons without giving them anything useful in return.
so taking the money from people that have that money because of some artificial rules by an other rule (the tax system) is just one way to try to compensate the many faults of the capitalist system.....
mond
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Endorsement or Truth? (Score:3, Insightful)
Technically, if it is true ("you" are selecting free/open source software to save tax dollars, and there is a statement someplace in the govt documents indicating that is part of the reason for the choices made) then endorsement or not, it's public information, and I do not see why stating it, if worded correctly (to properly indicate the reason such choices were made) would run afoul of anything.
I'm willing to bet that there isn't anything in his job description about collecting and publishing information about the software that he uses. In fact he could even get in trouble for doing that instead of something else that he should probably be doing. It is kind of like the equivalent of any IT person in any other organization compiling a list of the software they use and publishing it. What is the purpose? How does creating the list help the organization?
Speak at a conference (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pay for your free licenses (Score:5, Insightful)
You also don't need to buy support from an existing provider. You can ask the project leaders for something you find valuable to submit a bid for annual support within a defined price range. With the price range limited, they automatically win on competence.
I don't know what it's like over there (I expect it's similar) but over here that would be illegal as any competitor to that project could file court action claiming corruption in the tender process. And win.
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Government should be as efficient as possible. As a public servant, your responsibility is to the taxpayers. You should offer only those contributions which do not increase the burden on those taxpayers, or which directly benefit them.
It's that direct stipulation that leads to short-sightedness, and ends up costing taxpayers billions in the long run.
"Oh, well we don't need to shore up these levies in New Orleans. There's no immediate benefit when there hasn't been a major hurricane in years."
"Oh, bridges can last a little while longer than designed. We'll just send someone by periodically to do a cursory check. That's a lot cheaper than replacing all those 1930s projects."
"Who cares about preventative care. If you want that, get insurance and go to your doctor. Never mind that taxpayers will cover you when your problem gets worse and you go to the emergency room uninsured."
"Regulation is an inefficient burden on commerce. It's hard to show a direct benefit when you back during a boom and ignore any lessons more than three years old. Just let it all go, and the publicly-chartered companies will police themselves!"
I think we have very different opinions on "efficient". I believe that long-term and indirect benefits can be significantly more efficient than short-term nearsightedness, and the government if anyone should be able to look at the long term. In this case, for example, he should find a way to fund the projects he uses (such as buying support licenses), because in the long term it will keep the projects active and improving, and save significant cost versus a system redesign due to an EOL/abandoned software product.
Re:Get others in Gov to use it (Score:1, Insightful)
perhaps he could go around letting project know that they use their software and thanking them. He may not be allowed to put up a webpage saying "we use X", but telling the people at X that they do so that they can say "Y uses our software" is the other side of the coin, and may be worth asking about.
Re:Bug Reports (Score:3, Insightful)
In particular, write really good bug reports. Spend the time to track down the simplest conditions to reproduce the bug, write the steps up clearly and precisely, and contribute example code or data. This is an enormous help to open source projects.
Software isn't just programming... (Score:4, Insightful)
There are so many other things involved in getting software out: project management, graphic design, testing, training, documentation, advocacy, support, system administration, bug triage, design, architecture, translation (from *AND TO* your language), releases, etc...
Surely there's something you can do to help...
Pick some of your favorite projects, pick what you like to do that could help them, and look for opportunities to help out. Chances are it will be very well received.
Sean
Re:"Contributing" is impossible (Score:4, Insightful)
People pay me for useful services I do for them, and I pay people for useful services they do for me. That ad guy is useful for someone, useful for society? Society doesn't want anything, it's an anthromorphic combination of everyone else's wants. You can make some measure of efficiency but if you really want that, you can start by getting rid of everyone that lives off benefits first. That should clear up a couple billion carbon footprints. Interest on a portfolio is not for doing nothing, it's a loan of money is much the same way as if I loaned you my car. The only person who doesn't see that is someone who think he's entitled to borrow my car for free.
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Long term thinking is something we largely lack today in government, even in our ideals of governance, and it's dangerously short-sighted. This leads to not only shoddy patchwork and disasters like New Orleans, but larger cultural instability as well, which leads to disasters of its own.
Re:"Contributing" is impossible (Score:3, Insightful)
Government operates by forcibly taking money from one person and giving it to another person or organization. So you can't "contribute" to open source any more than I can contribute my neighbor's car to a needy family.
The difference between you and government is that government can do it, unlike you. That's why we have it in the first place.
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
Long term thinking is something we largely lack today
Fixed.
Re:Pay for your free licenses (Score:4, Insightful)
So, how much does a support contract with unlimited incidents [redhat.com] from Microsoft cost for Windows 2008 Slightly Less Artificially Crippled Edition (TM)? Keep in mind you need to buy the software too, and that starts around $1000 and does not come with any support whatsoever.
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
So they should use the applications and not pay them back? What kind of cheapskate attitude is that?
If there's wasn't any good Open Source apps, you would probably pay *more* than any kind of donation.
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
But it's OK for taxpayer dollars to go into the coffers of a corporation? I find that odd.
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
I donate to projects that are doing really great work. But that doesn't mean my tax dollars should go to them.
Typical knee-jerk conservatism by someone who doesn't understand conservatism (or basic finance). There's nothing wrong with making an investment in resources, which is what he's trying to do.
Giving a little money to continue the development of a product the state is using and that's saving the state significant money is an investment, as surely as doing maintenance on a bridge or a highway is an investment. The money helps ensure continued development and support for the product, so that the state spends a little right now to save a lot in the long run.
This is basic small-'r' republicanism that has been foolishly and disingenuously demonized by big-'R' Republicans to the point where government investment now takes place in multimillion dollar rebuilds [wikipedia.org] (and multi-trillion dollar bailouts) instead of common sense, long-term money-saving measures.
_______________
Yes, I'm a conservative.
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
As a public servant, your responsibility is to the taxpayers.
Don't you meant to citizens, or to voters? If a public servant's responsibility is to tax payers, your voting power would have been proportional to the amount of tax you pay.
Re:You're doing it wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary, I'd be happy to see my tax dollars used to support and improve software that I can then access and use for free. We all benefit both directly (better software) and indirectly (donors that we're funding able to accomplish their required tasks).
For the requisite car analogy, think roads. My tax dollars being used to support FOSS is like improving most roads, whereas my tax dollars being used to support proprietary software is akin to improving toll roads. In both situations the roads are better, but in the latter case I have to pay to make use of the improvements.
Re:Pay for your free licenses (Score:3, Insightful)
What is that based on? As long as the tender is open ("we want option x and we are willing to pay no more than $y for it") and offered to all other competitors as well where is the problem? Or are you not allowed to put a price on a tender beforehand?
If you would offer directly to a developer or two without allowing competitors to bid, I can imagine it's illegal indeed.
Here's how.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Expose Open Source for the charity work that it really is.
You can convince your state to allow open source contributors to get tax deductions based on their hourly contributions at their usual rate of pay, up to %10 of their annual income.
Re:The obvious response (Score:2, Insightful)
Or by WTFM
Re:A Dichotomous Question? (Score:3, Insightful)
So if you'd like to contribute in other ways, pick a project that has something that you know a lot about or are passionate about and try to make small improvements submitted as patches. Good with embedded C? Try to help out the Firefox team in squeezing out cycles. Good with computer vision algorithms? Hit up OpenCV or even write some more script/extensions for the Gimp. What's your passion? The most important thing to remember is to not get discouraged when your patch gets rejected or deferred or sent back. Ask for feedback from the team and keep in mind you're there to support them. Firefox might be too closely knit of a project for you to break into but just perusing sourceforge or github will open up your eyes to who's out there looking for your help. A lot of these projects have wish lists.
Why is it so hard to understand that there are people out there who don't have hot coding skills (and no time or inclination to gain them), who think FLOSS is good, use FLOSS tools, and want to contribute? Go and read the original question again. Now explain how the above paragraph is helpful. How do you read I'm certainly not a talented enough programmer to help with development and manage to suggest Good with embedded C? Try to help out the Firefox team in squeezing out cycles. Oh, the smart, welcoming world of open source. I'm glad you helped.