Talented developers/programmers who have time to work on open source projects are by far the engine behind any successful open source project. People who can actually “build things” will be the ones who make new and innovative things happen on the web with open source. There are however of course much more people using open source software then their are making it. Which can sometimes be frustrating to open source programmers. If you are not a programmer however, there are many ways you can contribute to help develop and perfect open source projects. Here are the top ten I came up with:

1. Provide Feedback on your Usage - there are many people out there who are using open source software, and are not giving any feedback to the development community on their usage. Positive or negative, we need to know what’s working and what’s not. And also what improvements you think there should be.
2. Submit Bugs - if you have found a bug or problem with the tool/app that you are using, then make it known! Don’t just think that these things get fixed automagically. Somebody needs to report the problem in order for it to be fixed.
3. Tell Others about Open Source Software - awareness is still one of the biggest things holding open source software back. For example, it amazes me that there are some people out there who are still using Internet Explorer. I can’t tell you how many people I have converted from IE to Firefox just by making them aware of Firefox and it’s capabilities. Spread the word!
4. Write Reviews on your Blog - if you have a good experience with a certain open source software, then let you readers know by writing about it on your blog. This is a great way to promote open source projects and get the word out.
5. Answer Questions on Forums & Threads - if you come across questions about open source projects that you know answers too, answer them! This can be a very valuable tool for those who are trying to learn how to do certain things that you already know. For example, if you know how to install Wordpress on your local machine and you find a forum thread with that question, don’t hesitate to answer it! This not only will help the person asking the question, but it will increase the visibility of that open source project on the search engines allowing other people in the future to “google” the same question.
6. Don’t Hesitate to Give Suggestions - don’t ever hesitate to give suggestions on things you think could make the application better! Chances are you have a different view of the universe that will help bring a different and important perspective to the open source project.
7. Make A Donation - sometimes it doesn’t hurt to give a few dollars to showy our appreciation to an open source development team. This is not as important as the other things. But it can still be valuable.

I hope this helps. I love open source and if you are reading this I assume you do to. The more of us who can contribute to the overall open source movement the better. I believe that open source software projects will eventually if not already, prove to the key factor in innovation in software and technology.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Blogging, Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.