Programmer for hire

[Bob Tilley (AT&T)]

I would like to wet my feet in the Open Source pool. Can anyone suggest any needy Projects? I can do C, C++, Pascal, Assembly, etc. and would like to put my talents to work to give something back to the Community that has given my desktop so much.

Robert Tilley
***@cfl.rr.com Home
***@cocoa.tybrin.com Work

[Patrick Schnorbus]

Post by Bob Tilley (AT&T)
I would like to wet my feet in the Open Source pool. Can anyone suggest
any needy Projects? I can do C, C++, Pascal, Assembly, etc. and would like
to put my talents to work to give something back to the Community that has
given my desktop so much.

You may want to have a look at savannah.gnu.org and sourceforge.net.

cheers,
Patrick

[David Bishop]

Post by Bob Tilley (AT&T)
I would like to wet my feet in the Open Source pool. Can anyone suggest
any needy Projects? I can do C, C++, Pascal, Assembly, etc. and would like
to put my talents to work to give something back to the Community that has
given my desktop so much.

As someone that has contributed in (very) small ways to several different open
source projects, I can tell you that your approach, while well-meaning, is
almost definetly the wrong way 'round. A much better way is to look at your
desktop, figure out what you use the most, pick something in that app that is
lacking, and fix it. Rinse, repeat, until you find a project that 'clicks'.
The problem with just going with a 'needy' project (and in open source, *all*
projects need more programmers, thus making this somewhat moot) is that it is
difficult to sustain the drive needed to actually help, when working on a
program that you never use. Case in point: my level of involvement in kpilot
dropped of dramatically (to nothing) when I started syncing my handspring to
my ibook, and stopped using my linux box. Same with kmamerun (not using mame
much anymore), and umbrello (no longer diagramming things), and etc....

So, if you think kate's code folding abilities leave something to be desired,
or kdevelop would be a lot nicer with objc support, or k3b could use a way to
automatically convert videos for vcds, then go forth and do! And absolutely
the best of luck. We need all the help we can get :-)

D.A.Bishop

[Svenn Are Bjerkem]

Post by David Bishop
So, if you think kate's code folding abilities leave something to be
desired, or kdevelop would be a lot nicer with objc support, or k3b could
use a way to automatically convert videos for vcds, then go forth and do!
 And absolutely the best of luck.  We need all the help we can get :-)

Key problem #1 in open source: There are so many people out there with some
programming skills and so few with project management skills. End is that
most popular projects have a fork or two. Just look at freshmeat.net for a
year or two and most hypes get forked. Nice, but useless waste of effort. I
think it *is* the proper way to say: Hey here I am, can I help. And then the
package maintainers must rise their heads and check if they can load off some
load on this new strong soul, but, no, most package maintainers are so deep
into their own problems that this extra energy goes to waste.

I want to help you with your shoe, but you have to tell me where it hurts as
long as you don't let me wear it...

[Randy Kramer]

Post by Bob Tilley (AT&T)
I would like to wet my feet in the Open Source pool. Can anyone suggest
any needy Projects? I can do C, C++, Pascal, Assembly, etc. and would like
to put my talents to work to give something back to the Community that has
given my desktop so much.

Bob,

David Bishop's advice is good, nevertheless, I'd like to suggest two projects
that I'd like to see get done (and I haven't been able to do them (so far,
and maybe never)):

* Add collapsible outlining to AbiWord.

* Add a keyboard macro facility to X (the X server).

If you (or anyone else) are interested in either one of these, I can try to
tell you what I know (which isn't much).

regards,
Randy Kramer

[Dominique Devriese]

Post by Bob Tilley (AT&T)
I would like to wet my feet in the Open Source pool. Can anyone
suggest any needy Projects? I can do C, C++, Pascal, Assembly,
etc. and would like to put my talents to work to give something back
to the Community that has given my desktop so much.

A project that I personally think is important and would be fun to
work on, is the Debian installer. It will be the first portable
installer in any GNU/Linux distro, fills a very real need of the
Debian project, and looks very promising to me..

Maybe you can build a KDE based front-end for it, or something like
that ?

Check this page for more info:
http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

cheers
domi

[Kevin Krammer]

Post by Bob Tilley (AT&T)
I would like to wet my feet in the Open Source pool. Can anyone
suggest any needy Projects? I can do C, C++, Pascal, Assembly, etc.
and would like to put my talents to work to give something back to the
Community that has given my desktop so much.

I fully agree with David Bishop that you should find yourself a project
you have personal interest in.
This is necessary to keep motivated through the bring inital phase where
you very likely have to dig through lots of code other peopl wrote.

I like Dominique Devriese's suggestion to look at some Debian project.
There is always some work that is in the responsibility of the
distributor, for example providing GUI frontends for system
configuration, and in Debian, we are the distributor(s).

Cheers,
Kevin