On Thu, 2002-10-17 at 06:10, Sean 'Shaleh' Perry wrote: > On Wednesday 16 October 2002 14:58, deFreese, Barry wrote: > > Since my posts usually get ignored we'll see what happens with this one. > > :-) > > > > Since I don't have a great deal of money yet (When I win the lottery I > > promise to send big checks to Debian and Samba!! :-) ) what is the best way > > to contribute to the open source community? I've poked around on > > sourceforge to see if I could lend a hand but many of the projects that I > > found are probably a little over my head at this juncture. The initiative > > here is two-fold. > > > > 3) write tutorials, howtos, web docs, etc. Write a puff piece for freshmeat, > slashdot, etc. Yes! More documentation. More! How about a "How to setup Debian the way Barry deFreese likes it." HOWTO? Seriously. I've seen other docs like this, and although I don't follow them exactly, they invariably give me small ideas to incorporate. It's the thing that constantly amazes me about this whole chaotic development process and this 'Linux' thing that has been born. The fact that all these people are running this same OS, but all running it in completely different ways. We get so used to our own interface-streamlining, that we often forget that the guy running Linux down the road has it set up sooo totally differently, that we'd feel lost on their desktop. Its a different headscape to the closed source vendor OS (OSX, windows), where one size fits all. Without seeing how others operate within this chaos, how can we be open to new paradigms of user-machine interface? For me, recently I read that article on freshmeat (http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/581/) about running ratpoison alongside screen as an X/Shell combined desktop. This was a prime example. I tried ratpoison, didn't like it. So I gave Ion a try as a window manager. I'm running this ATM, really liking it, seeing the potential it holds, and seeing the problems it has, and thinking of features I would like. Now if I had more time, I might dive in and contribute, and perhaps I will in the next 6 months or so, but the point is, without that original article on freshmeat, I would still be a blackbox zealot with a closed mind thinking I had finally found my final resting place. As if there is such a thing... If you do write documentation, don't forget to attach a license. The FDL springs to mind. Kind Regards Crispin Wellington
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