Open Source Participation question

[smb3]

I want to pick up some experience in certain programming technologies so I came across one of those code hosting sites (there are many but chose github since projects seem more fun there) ... the idea is to just code stuff for projects to learn (since I can't think of anything practical to code myself) but not become too involved in open source coding because I have other commitments like marriage ... lol

anyhow the question is that did anybody work on opensource projects before while working full time? If yes, how much hours did you allocate each day or week towards your project?

 

[walter_l]

The answer to this question really depends on the project and the level of involvement you want to have in said project. Most projects (especially smaller ones) would (should) be glad for any help they can get and therefore not mind how much time you spend on it.

The usual way to "get involved", specifically in the development side, is to pick an existing bug/issue/feature request, download the source and start working on it. If you are planning on contributing your work back to the project (as you really should!), the polite thing to do would be to contact the project maintainers to let them know that you are willing to take on the issue you picked - preferably on the project's issue tracker/forum/Google Group. This is important since it will avoid wasting work on an issue that someone else may be working on. If you have no specific issue that you would want to work on you can simply ask for recommendations on what you can work on, that align with your availability.

Unless this issue is part of an upcoming release (or other approaching event on the project roadmap), there will probably not be any time restrictions. In that case you can spend time on it as you can. Though try to keep the issue updated with your progress and try to keep any promises you might have made. It is better to be honest about your availability/restrictions than to make promises you cannot keep.

Moral of the story: don't let things such as time constraints keep you from contributing. Communicate with the project maintainers/community and you will usually find them welcoming and eager to accommodate you - or at least they should be.

 

[riverdusty]

A friend of mine manages about 300 ports and perl related projects and is an opensource developer full time. His wife is the bread winner. If you have a passion for it, then time is not an issue.
If, like me, time is an issue, then start with something small. I'm currently trying to port the CogVM into OpenBSD. The one thing you'll need to learn, or indeed I need to learn, is to code in C as well as the library support in C.
As mentioned above, find something small, a feature, bug, request, porting, etc and try work on it. The big thing is to share it back to the community. The reason is more for your own learning. If you fix a bug in a certain way, they may thank you for the bug fix and even suggest a better way to code it. That way you learn and contribute.
Take a look at freshmeat.net and sourceforge for communities built around opensource development.