New Book Helps You Start Contributing To Open Source 48
jrepin writes "This new book Open Advice is the answer to: 'What would you have liked to know when you started contributing?' 42 prominent free and open source software contributors give insights into the many different talents it takes to make a successful software project; coding, of course, but also design, translation, marketing and other skills. They are here to give you a head start if you are new. And if you have been contributing for a while already, they are here to give you some insight into other areas and projects."
Awesome! (Score:2)
Looks nice (Score:5, Informative)
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Kudos to them for walking the walk and making this freely available. So, if we want to get a printed copy and support the effort, which purchase avenue sends the most money in the most useful direction?
Re:Looks nice (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently, it will be soon available at Amazon, but for now you can buy it here [lulu.com]. The money would go to Lydia Pintscher [lydiapintscher.de], who has been actively involved in FOSS since 1990, and in recent years KDE. So pretty sure it will get poured into OSS development.
IMHO though, it would probably just be better to directly send donations, bug reports and patches to your favourite open source projects. :)
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Apparently, it will be soon available at Amazon, but for now you can buy it here [lulu.com]. The money would go to Lydia Pintscher [lydiapintscher.de], who has been actively involved in FOSS since 1990, and in recent years KDE. So pretty sure it will get poured into OSS development.
IMHO though, it would probably just be better to directly send donations, bug reports and patches to your favourite open source projects. :)
I you expect me to believe that Lydia Pintcher has been involved in FOSS since she was 5 or 6 years old? http://www.lydiapintscher.de/about.php [lydiapintscher.de]
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Re:Looks nice (Score:5, Informative)
And reading my question would've been faster than typing your reply.
At the risk of getting banned from Slashdot, I actually did follow the summary's link before I asked the question. I saw two alternatives, a "coming soon" link to Amazon and a link to Lulu. I saw nothing about which path would return more money to the project. So, my question: which way of buying is better (for the project)?
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Both?
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I saw nothing about which path would return more money to the project. So, my question: which way of buying is better (for the project)?
Download it from their site and donate the entire amount directly to them?
"Looks nice" (Score:1)
That's TeX for you! :)
EPUB? (Score:1)
Looks great. Will there be an EPUB version? In the PDF it says
Visit http://open-advice.org to download this book as PDF or
eBook
As this is all about Open, I hope eBook means EPUB and not some proprietary crap.
Re:EPUB? (Score:5, Informative)
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What about making it available for those of us without personal hygiene issues?
Ah, that's a non issue. Simply put the Venn Diagram for those given sets look something like this:
(_) (_)
we have it in pdf, but not in epub (Score:1)
Re:we have it in pdf, but not in epub (Score:5, Informative)
It is. called latex. run tex2epub and have it in your favorite format.
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It is. called latex. run tex2epub and have it in your favorite format.
It would be nice if that tool even existed:
This is on a popular Debian-derived distro:
saturn:~$ aptitude search tex3epub
saturn:~$
And this on CentOS:
[root@neptune]# yum search tex2epub
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
* base: centos.mirrorcatalogs.com
* extras: centos.mirror.netriplex.com
* updates: mirror.raystedman.net
addons | 951 B 00:00
base | 1.1 kB 00:00
c5-testing | 951 B 00:00
c5-testing/primary | 374 kB 00:00
c5-testing 916/916
extras | 2.1 kB 00:00
extras/primary_db | 179 kB 00:00
r1soft | 951 B 00:00
updates | 1.9 kB 00:00
updates/primary_db | 614 kB 00:00
Reducing CentOS-5 Testing to included packages only
Finished
Warning: No matches found for: tex2epub
No Matches found
[root@neptune]#
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And before the pedants jump on you:
apt-cache search tex2epub returns nothing as well.
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Here is a super secret link to it from the hyper secret search tool called google, it took 3 seconds to get it.
https://github.com/kmuto/latex2epub [github.com]
there is a world outside of apt-get
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Here is a super secret link to it from the hyper secret search tool called google, it took 3 seconds to get it.
https://github.com/kmuto/latex2epub [github.com]
there is a world outside of apt-get
Although I appreciate snide as much as anyone, you might notice that the hyper secret search tool called google has no idea what you are talking about:
https://www.google.com/search?q=tex2epub [google.com]
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I think it would be a good idea that the book will be avaliable in epub format, to read it in most e-readers.
As noted above, the sources are available so you can compile it to epub:
http://github.com/lydiapintscher/Open-Advice [github.com]
That is the spirit of Open Source, I suppose! Upstream provides the source, you compile it as you see fit.
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Anyone have tips on how to actually produce a decent-looking epub ebook with pandoc or latex2html/Calibre?
I tried several incantations of pandoc, none of which produced more than gibberish. For example: pandoc -w epub -o Open-Advice.epub -S -s Open-Advice.tex
latex2html got much further (generated a real HTML book), but it had tons of munged words. I didn't bother trying to munge the mess to epub.
From what I can tell, the conversion tools can help, but the source text really has to have epub in mind if tha
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Maybe they could get money (Score:3, Funny)
If they sold it in the apple store.
Pages 209-213 most important. (Score:5, Interesting)
It explains why most free software or community projects fail and how to avoid that.
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To quote from the book:
People tend to be around when there is something exciting, like a big release, and then disappear until the next exciting thing. Creating a community team should never assume that the people will stay fully committed the entire length of time. You have to factor in that they will be in for a while and then disappear for longer periods and then come back (...) So instead of planning big things, nd something small, doable and useful in itself. Not a wiki page with a plan, but the rst step of what you aim for. And then, lead by doing.
Re:Shut up and patch/fork it yourself (Score:5, Interesting)
That's true on some projects. There are a few megalomaniac assholes out there. Some are quite successful [openbsd.org]. Some are not [xfree86.org].
Sometimes the users are unreasonable. On smaller projects, you can't expect a two person dev team to drop everything they're working on to add whatever minor feature every user wants. In these cases, it's actually sound advice; if you want it, send us a patch, and we'll give it a try. They're not being assholes in these cases; they just don't have the time. In other cases, you have people who disagree with fundamental parts of a project. They demand sweeping changes that would affect the entire codebase. It's just not possible to make everyone happy.
If you think about it, it's not really that much different than the closed source world; software companies don't bow to the whim of every user that submits an idea. Maybe, if enough people want a feature, they'll add it - but there's no guarantee. With open source, if enough people want a feature, one of those people will probably have the ability and time to code it and submit a patch.
None of those are the reason there are 300+ Linux distros out there. There are a few distros that were forked due to poor management, but most of the time it's down to philosophical differences. Debian exists to fulfill the idea of a completely free platform. Redhat exists to make money. Slackware exists because it's been there since the dawn of time and some people like they way it does things. Ubuntu exists to provide a polished, user-friendly version of Debian. DSL exists for small installs. Many distros exist because some people decided they wanted to try making their own distro. When you get down to it, there's only really a handful of relevant distros out there - the other ones are really only for hobbyists, people with special needs, or people who want to try something different. If one of the small ones comes up with a good idea, it might get adopted by one of the big distros. It's useful, and I don't understand why people think multiple distros is a bad thing.
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Let's all say it together, once again, for those who somehow missed it:
Linux is not a business!
Again!
Linux is not a business!!
I can't hear you!
LINUX IS NOT A BUSINESS!!!
Ahem. Linux's survival does not depend on marketshare. It doesn't follow capitalistic ideals. It will survive, and continue to survive, because people want to keep working on it. Red Hat might go bankrupt, Canonical may close its doors, Linus might decide to switch to Amiga - but Linux will go on.
If that's not "good enough" for you, then
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Holy carp - I think you've just laid down the tenets of a new religion!
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what i'd like to have been taught: (Score:1)
Is that it's just like any other social human endeavour: it's not what you know, but who you know. If you socialise and pay homage to all the right people on the project, whether it's BSD or some random game pack, then you'll get advice and the chance to contribute and have your code checked, corrected and checked in with constructive criticisms. But if you rub their Lordships the wrong way, your efforts will be viewed at counterproductive and you'll be cast out.
In a way, it's easier to work in a company th
This is relevant to my interests. (Score:3)
I've been working on a game project for over a year now. I'd open-sourced it quite some time ago, but I'm currently in the process of moving it from "my project that has GPL'd source" to "an open-source project". I've put it up on Sourceforge, although I'm not yet using SVN/Git or have the downloads there. I've kept community involvement to a minimum and kept the project pretty low-publicity, since it's not quite ready for wide release. The next release, 0.1.0, is supposed to change that, but I've had some rather extreme delays due to personal and personnel problems.
I'm about a quarter through this book now, and while much of it so far has been stuff I already know, even just putting it all together is enlightening. And if the later chapters are more in-depth, it might be a lifesaver.