Phil dropped the gauntlet, I'm picking it up (albeit a day late). Phil gave you ideas on how to contribute, need ideas on projects to contribute to? Brian DeMarzo has a list of tools that I'm sure you use. I contributed to five open source projects that I use everyday. I have contributed to several open source projects in the past by submitting patches, tweaking some docs, etc. But I agree with Phil that we really need to call out this day as a special occasion. I wanted to make it quick and easy and just donate $1.00 to five projects, but alas, a large number of projects DO NOT provide a means to accept monetary contributions. I realize that for most projects, my time is worth more to you than my money. Even so, keep the money chnnel open. Here are my contributions:
1. Answered a question on the Castle Project forum. (Hammett, you need a donate button, call it the Castle Conference Fund)
2. Reflector. I would easily pay $99 for this app. Alas, I could not contribute code or donate. However, I suddenly wanted to learn more about 'Parabolic Mirrors' and there was a convenient link located just below Reflector.zip.
3. I donated $1.00 to TortoiseSVN.
4. I donated $1.00 to Paint.Net.
5. I donated $5.00 to SubText. (Only because SourceForge wouldn't let me donate $1.00)
When I could I put a comment about Supporting Contribute to Open Source Day with the donation, to encourage people to pay it forward.
I would have gladly donated $1.00 to the Castle Project, nHibernate, and Rhino-Tools if they made that capability available. In lieu of that I sincerely thank the Castle Team, nHibernate Team, and Rhino Team for producing great software.
The beauty of it all is that it took me more time to write this blog post than it did to contribute to 5 projects!
posted @ Friday, July 27, 2007 9:20 AM