From Teaching Open Source

Contents 1 Finding great stuff to use 1.1 What do you need? Making criteria. 1.2 Places to look 1.3 Types of FOSS software you might not have thought of 1.4 Finding guidance and documentation 2 Lurking 2.1 Assessing a community 2.2 Asking for usage help 2.3 Filing a bug 3 Through a release cycle 3.1 Development begins and feature proposals open 3.1.1 Task: Find the feature proposal process 3.2 Feature acceptance and freeze 3.2.1 Task: 3.3 Alpha freeze and release 3.3.1 Task: 3.4 Feature completion 3.4.1 Task: 3.5 Beta freeze and release 3.5.1 Task: 3.6 Final freeze and release 3.6.1 Task: 4 Teams 4.1 Infrastructure 4.2 Documentation 4.3 Marketing 4.4 Translation 4.5 Design 4.6 Outreach 5 Misc 5.1 Attending events 6 For instructors 6.1 Chapter notes 6.2 Preparing your course and the community for each other 7 For communities 7.1 Chapter notes

[edit] Finding great stuff to use

How often do we wake up and think "I want to find a FOSS project to join"? Almost never. What usually happens is that we have a problem and look for a FOSS tool to solve it. So first, let's think about the question "I need FOSS to do X, how do I find it?"

[edit] What do you need? Making criteria.

[edit] Places to look

[edit] Types of FOSS software you might not have thought of

Have you considered...

• design and publishing software
• little utilities - resistor code calculators, sticky notes,
• music-writing, music-making, audio-editing
• language support - multilingual input, translation, learning

[edit] Finding guidance and documentation

• search engines are your friend

[edit] Lurking

Once you start using FOSS, you have questions, so focus sprint 2 on that - how do I get help? how do I find FOSS with helpful people. One you get comfortable with FOSS, you start finding bugs and having ideas. Then you start making small contributions.

[edit] Assessing a community

[edit] Asking for usage help

[edit] Filing a bug

[edit] Through a release cycle

[edit] Development begins and feature proposals open

[edit] Task: Find the feature proposal process

Skills:

• Wiki navigation

Tools:

• wiki

Cultural principles:

• Productively lost.
• Pay it forward.

1. Find the feature proposal process and the current proposed features.
2. Understand the structure of feature proposals (general Software Engineering)
3. Improve a feature proposal
4. Monitor the feature discussion
5. Search a ticket tracker for issues that could be good features

Advanced:

1. Write a feature proposal
2. Start feature marketing planning

[edit] Feature acceptance and freeze

[edit] Task:

Skills:

Tools:

Cultural principles:

[edit] Alpha freeze and release

[edit] Task:

Skills:

Tools:

Cultural principles:

[edit] Feature completion

[edit] Task:

Skills:

Tools:

Cultural principles:

[edit] Beta freeze and release

[edit] Task:

Skills:

Tools:

Cultural principles:

[edit] Final freeze and release

[edit] Task:

Skills:

Tools:

Cultural principles:

[edit] Teams

[edit] Infrastructure

[edit] Documentation

[edit] Marketing

[edit] Translation

[edit] Design

[edit] Outreach

[edit] Misc

[edit] Attending events

[edit] For instructors

[edit] Chapter notes

Notes on each chapter.

[edit] Preparing your course and the community for each other

Draw from article written for FIE.

[edit] For communities

[edit] Chapter notes

Notes on each chapter.