What are the problems faced by people who are starting to contribute to OSS

Re:What are the problems faced by people who are starting to... by vitovito on Thursday September 22, 2016 @11:43PM (#12562172)

There will be people reading this who have never used a Terminal, or typed at a command line, or called directories anything other than "folders".

There will be people reading this who have never installed anything that wasn't from an App Store.

There will be people reading this who have never heard of source control, branches, repos, or any of the other jargon in your document.

I think the number two thing project maintainers need to do is to stop making assumptions about the background and experience level of their potential contributors; or, if they do, to admit and outline them.

I write more about this here: http://opendesign.foundation/articles/import-designers/

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Re:What are the problems faced by people who are starting to... by flukus on Thursday September 22, 2016 @11:50PM (#12562179)

Someone described by those first 3 things probably couldn't do much on an OS project anyway.

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Re:What are the problems faced by people who are starting to... by NetStrikeForce on Friday September 23, 2016 @06:35AM (#12563547)

That's the another problem potential contributors face: Assumptions that because someone is not technical, they can't meaningfully contribute to a project. Dismissal of plain users feedback because "they don't know what they are talking about".

Unless you're creating OSS tools for e.g. developers, your final users are probably not as technical as yourself - so you might want to hear feedback from people that actually has to use your tool.

(Sorry, this is not really directed at you and I'm not picking on you, I don't know you at all! :) Your comment just reminded me of what I describe above)

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Re:What are the problems faced by people who are starting to... by sudo_bangbang on Friday September 23, 2016 @12:40AM (#12562357)

Agree with @flukus. I didn't put anything about pre-requisites because I didn't want to drive anyone away. Anybody seeing these things for the first time can just google it and learn right?

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Re:What are the problems faced by people who are starting to... by afarrell on Friday September 23, 2016 @03:32AM (#12562937)

For some people, it takes quite a while to learn to be comfortable with the command line.

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Re:What are the problems faced by people who are starting to... by bbcbasic on Friday September 23, 2016 @06:51AM (#12563602)

Some open sourcerers use Windows and Visual Studio and Sourcetree. No cmd needed!

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Re:What are the problems faced by people who are starting to... by dispo001 on Friday September 23, 2016 @04:39AM (#12563162)

Everyone has to start some place.

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