The
first step to contributing to an open source project is obviously to
research which one you want to contribute to. My search for a project
was probably a little bit different from many of my classmates’ because I
was approached by some classmates who already had a project in mind.
However, I still did a little bit of research on my own. I will use this
opportunity to talk about 2 open source projects, before I talk about
the project that my classmates want me to join them on.
One
of the famous open source software projects is Mozilla Firefox. It is
an open source web browser is developed for Windows, OSX, and Linux
platforms. It is probably one of the more popular open source projects
that I am familiar with. In fact, Firefox is my web browser of choice.
One of the interesting things about it is the high amount of add-ons for
it. These work to help the user customize their browser and add
functionality to it.
Another
large open source projects is the Linux operating system. This project
exists to give users a choice of a free operating system that is able to
compete with major commercial releases. Linux is also fully
customizable, and many users have created many different forms of it.
These Linux distributions allow users to have a choice in how they want
the operating system to run. Some distros emphasize speed, while others
focus more on ease of use. Anybody can create their own Linux distro and
release it to the public. If it becomes popular enough, then the
community at large might adopt it. This type of approach to software is
highly indicative of the open source mindset. You are able to take the
base releases, and add to them until they are suitable for your needs.
However,
it is unlikely that I will work on either of these projects, because as
I said before, I was approached by a group to help them with their
project. Michael Cole, Hunter Hegler, Joanna Illing, and Laryea Quaye
asked me if I would help them work on creating the community for an open
source project. I can’t say much about the project right now because
the paper describing it has not been presented to the community at
large, but I can say that it is called Obsidian, and is test case
creation software. Like I said earlier, this semester we will be
responsible for trying to foster a community for this project. This will
require us to make a wiki to tell people how to get our software up and
running, an IRC channel where people can ask questions in a live
environment, creating a website for the software, and many other tasks
to get people to adopt Obsidian.
Overall,
I am very excited by this project right now. I like the idea of trying
to create a community for this project. We will also be trying to make
the software better throughout the semester, but I think that the
majority of our time will be focused on getting this software’s name out
there. I feel like there is a lot to learn from this, and I look
forward to the semester eagerly.
No comments:
Post a Comment