Ask HN: What are some ways to support open source projects besides writing code?
8 comments
Pretty much always you can "give them a $20", every medium+ sized project has some kind of support program going or accepts donations.
However, if they don't or someone doesn't have a $20 to throw at open source, there are a lot of ways to help. Just to mention a few (assuming you are at least an active user):
- help less experienced users (answer community questions, reported issues etc.),
- improve documentation (documentation is never finished),
- share your knowledge about a tool (write an article, tutorial),
- take part in tests and report bugs,
- apply your skills (design, writing, community management etc.) to aid project's needs,
- create (and maintain) a useful "resource" (e.g. list of example projects, plugin reviews).
There are many ways that often go "unnoticed" or rather... no one may officially pat you on the back for it, but it helps.
However, if they don't or someone doesn't have a $20 to throw at open source, there are a lot of ways to help. Just to mention a few (assuming you are at least an active user):
- help less experienced users (answer community questions, reported issues etc.),
- improve documentation (documentation is never finished),
- share your knowledge about a tool (write an article, tutorial),
- take part in tests and report bugs,
- apply your skills (design, writing, community management etc.) to aid project's needs,
- create (and maintain) a useful "resource" (e.g. list of example projects, plugin reviews).
There are many ways that often go "unnoticed" or rather... no one may officially pat you on the back for it, but it helps.
Documentation! See this recent thread for example:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13437252
Or generally anything that helps user experience: documentation, improving web site/documentation design, testing, finding bugs and making high quality bug reports, evangelizing the project to users who need it but aren't aware, becoming a expert user of the project (which will almost certainly lead to bug reports, suggestions for improvements to features and documentation, etc.) and triaging tickets, answering questions in the support forum, etc.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13437252
Or generally anything that helps user experience: documentation, improving web site/documentation design, testing, finding bugs and making high quality bug reports, evangelizing the project to users who need it but aren't aware, becoming a expert user of the project (which will almost certainly lead to bug reports, suggestions for improvements to features and documentation, etc.) and triaging tickets, answering questions in the support forum, etc.
I don't have a lot if time to provide anything to most of the open source tools I use so I've setup monthly donations to them that my company matches. Some of the developers have wish lists as well that you can get them stuff from.
https://esheavyindustries.com/2016/02/have-some-extra-cash-h...
https://esheavyindustries.com/2016/02/have-some-extra-cash-h...
Totally support www.opencollective.com, those guys are awesome.
Documentation always helps
There needs to be a piecemeal way of supporting such projects, take a look at hit record.org for creative stuff and also I am part of a team thats building a platform to do exactly what you request. Launching Feb 8th. Check out www.crowdraising.co
I have been giving Mozilla foundation $20 each year. I use firefox daily and I am interested to see how Rust develops.
Write documentation. Good documentation is hard to find for a lot of open source software.
Seconding this, docs are some of the best way to get involved. Alot of open source docs are very bare bones and maintainers are usually more than happy to get a docs PR.
I would absolutely agree with this, except OP says that they don't know the relevant language or framework well enough to write code - it's possible but unlikely that they'd have the ability to understand the code well enough to write proper documentation (though presumably they could read the documentation and fix grammatical mistakes and such).
What are some ways to support open source projects besides writing code?