Ask HN: Do you actively contribute to open source projects?

23 points by nw 16 years ago | 30 comments

If so, which project(s)? I'm curious how much overlap exists between startup hackers and open source hackers.

cperciva 16 years ago |

I'm the Security Officer for the FreeBSD operating system... does that count? :-)

EDIT: I should add that this is one of the main reasons I got started in the field of online backups: There were lots of online backup solutions available, but I wasn't impressed with their security -- and due to being FreeBSD Security Officer, I tend to have sensitive information (e.g., about unannounced security vulnerabilities in OpenSSL/BIND/Sendmail/Apache/etc), making it absolutely essential that my backups be secure.

donw 16 years ago | |

No, because you're just contributing to Microsoft... ;p

Mintz 16 years ago |

I suppose somebody has to say it: No, I don't actively contribute to open source projects. No time, really.

davidw 16 years ago |

Sure:

http://www.welton.it/freesoftware/

And lots of little bits and pieces here and there.

mrduncan 16 years ago |

Yes, I actually just contributed my first patches for Rails this weekend (I think 3 or so got committed already) during the bugmash event. I definitely plan on making more contributions too.

ErrantX 16 years ago |

Define contribute? I tend to dabble in different things and contribute small patches for bug fixes, features etc. where I think it would be useful ;)

My friends call it Ninja Hacking.

socratees 16 years ago |

I just submit bugs & crashes that happen on my Ubuntu system. Otherwise, I've been trying to contribute something to open source but in vain.

bjelkeman-again 16 years ago |

Work daily on, but then that is my job. :)

http://akvo.org/

jamesotron 16 years ago |

I contributed a lot of code to Caudium back in the early 00's even going to the Pike/Caudium conference in Paderborn, Germany in 2003 (which is quite an expensive proposition for someone from New Zealand). My biggest open source project at the moment is a Pike library which reads in packets from libpcap and builds a table of active TCP and UDP flows, including all the metadata about the flows (and optionally the payload) with various callbacks so that you can easily build analysis, diagnostic, accounting or logging applications.

callmeed 16 years ago |

I open-sourced our help ticket system: http://github.com/bigfolio/big-help/tree/master

And I'm releasing an open-source image archiving app soon.

I'll admit, I'd love to contribute to a larger open-source project but I feel intimidated at times. Sometimes I'm not sure I have anything to bring to the table for such projects ... considering the talent that already works on them.

jseifer 16 years ago |

I wouldn't say I actively contribute. However, I do contribute when I need something done. For example, I need Spree (open source Rails e-commerce) to handle s3 downloads so I created and open sourced the s3 download extension. I needed attachment_fu (Rails attachment plugin) to use the GD library, so I forked and added that, which later got merged back in. I don't regularly spend a ton of time on open source stuff, but if I need it, I do it.

GeneralMaximus 16 years ago |

I currently work on the Haiku project as a part of Haiku Code Drive. I wish to become a full time contributor once I'm done with the Code Drive.

Also, I might start writing a FOSS app of my own in the future. It's just an itch I want to scratch.

I can contribute to FOSS because I'm still in college. I guess people with jobs or startups might not have enough time for, um, "extra-curricular" activities.

shykes 16 years ago |

We're the main contributors to http://dotcloud.org

Open-source system automation for the cloud.

Locke1689 16 years ago |

Yes. I have contributed patches to FFMpeg, was the OS X AzSMRC dev for a while, and I have a very large patch in progress for QEMU.

kingkilr 16 years ago |

I've contributed a few patches to unladen-swallow, but most of my time is spent contributing to Django (I'm the multi-db guy :P)

mapleoin 16 years ago |

I contribute to the Fedora Project's Infrastructure. Specifically the pkgdb: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb

I've also contributed extremely insignificant patches to django and turbogears.

I'm not a startup hacker though...

gdp 16 years ago |

I did reasonably significant work on the ModelJUnit project for several months, but these days I'm back to concentrating on my own crazy schemes.

http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~marku/mbt/modeljunit/

intellectronica 16 years ago |

Yes, I work full time on https://launchpad.net/

maryrosecook 16 years ago |

Um, I open source my own projects at github.com/maryrosecook Does that count?

Locke1689 16 years ago | |

Yes, assuming they could possibly have use for others. :)

jdoliner 16 years ago |

I contribute actively to BRLCAD. Although I do get paid to do it.

vicaya 16 years ago |

Core developer of Hypertable (http://hypertable.org/). Had patches accepted in Git, Reviewboard, Thrift, etc.

Jem 16 years ago |

I've released a series of PHP scripts for personal (young) webmasters under the GPL if that counts.

haseman 16 years ago |

I just started up the iPhone ARKit. An Apache licensed Augmented Reality toolkit for the iPhone

arantius 16 years ago |

Yes, I'm one of the two core contributors to/maintainers of the Greasemonkey Firefox extension.

jsonscripter 16 years ago |

I work on GPLd code at work, but it is not distributed, so that doesn't really count.

wynand 16 years ago |

I contributed a bit to Apertium (a machine translation system).

there 16 years ago |

yes, i'm an openbsd developer (though not contributing much these days).

i've contributed patches to a number of other small projects that i don't keep track of.

woid 16 years ago |

my one-man show: http://binaryage.com

thetrumanshow 16 years ago |