[nylug-talk] OSS Project

[Ron Guerin]

Paul Robbins wrote:
> Does anyone have a good link to an article about beginning an OSS project?
> I work for a fairly large company and most of my day is geared towards
> making someone above me more money.  It is fun, but I really don't get the
> feeling I am contributing anything back to society.  I thought that perhaps
> starting an OSS project would be a good way to give something back.  I am
> really just looking for someone else's description on trying to start a new
> OSS project or something along those lines. Any direction is greatly
> appreciated.  Sorry for the vagueness.

The best reason for starting a project is to scratch an itch that cannot
be scratched without starting a new project.  That should in reality be
a very narrow band, leaving a lot of existing projects that could use
more contributors.

I have one project on SourceForge myself, started only after a search
for something that met my specific requirements began eating up more
time than I anticipated it would take to write the code from scratch.
As others have said here already, the best way to get involved is to
pick something that interests you, or would help you personally, or help
some group of people you're interested in (such as helping an existing
project or projects with their accessibility issues).

The worst thing to do though would be to re-invent the wheel for no
apparent reason.

- Ron