We are currently in an age where a large portion of open source apps are actively maintained, users understand more about open source than ever before and open source software is almost as good, if not better, than their proprietary counterparts.
This is just a huge thank you to anyone and everyone involved in the making and maintaining of open source software.
As a regular tester, I do my best to provide any feedback I can to make your vision come to fruition.
People who write documentation, tutorials, and offer help to newbies are also important. We as a community really need to highlight that you don’t need to be a coder to contribute to open source. We should set examples how sharing of knowledge is just as important.
Hmm. I have been moving towards more and more open source. But my ability to code is very limited. Is there any kind of guide on how to get involved when you can’t code?
Bug reporting and doco are both very useful, and mostly don’t require coding ability. If you find a bug, report it. Use as much detail as you can, ideally with instructions to replicate the bug. “XYZ doesn’t work” is useless, “XYZ will crash when used with a invalid file, file to replicate is attached” is gold. Working out exactly what detail is an art, but the more detail you give the Dev, the more chance they have to solve it quickly and easily.
If you struggled to set something up and the documentation wasn’t clear, update it. Devs are notoriously bad at writing docs, and most will accept doco PR. (I repeatedly walk people through the setup of my project, because the docs are out of date and I’m too lazy/busy to update them. If someone does this for you, write it down, and see if you can insert it into their docs for them). Anything you do to help new users (which saves the Dev time), is a net positive.
Lastly, coding may seem daunting, but there are tons of resources, and many (but not all) Devs are happy to advise/mentor. Adding small features (button to do X) may be very easy. Some Devs will happily walk you through it if you ask (some may not, depends on the Dev).
https://www.browserstack.com/guide/how-to-write-a-bug-report
https://www.writethedocs.org/guide/writing/beginners-guide-to-docs/
Thank you! This really does point me in the right direction.
And as an aside, I absolutely love how welcoming the open source community is.
Oh, absolutely, didn’t think of them. My personal experiences have been with good bug reporters, which is why I focused on that, but really anything that takes the load off the Dev is a net positive.