On 19/10/15 16:58, Morris, Russell wrote:
I'd be happy to help out - but as above, I'm not an expert. So definitely
willing, but usefulness may be questionable unfortunately ... ;-).
That isn't too far away from where I started and got involved into the OpenVPN
core dev-team. I was far from an OpenVPN expert. I had very little OpenVPN
development experience but had worked on a patch for OpenVPN to solve an issue
for I had with a plug-in I was working on for OpenVPN.
But I took the risk of stepping up, saying "I can help" ... and some months
later I had gained enough trust in the community to be one of the first
gatekeepers of the newly established git repository for OpenVPN.
My point is that nobody really expects anyone to be a fully experienced
OpenVPN developer to get involved. Not at all. We are a community, which
help each other. If you have some basic skills (for my part, I know C fairly
well but by no means an expert) and interest to help ... I mean, what else can
we ask for if you are willing to help out? :)
Don't be afraid, take that chance and share your thoughts and ideas. Hang out
on the #openvpn-devel IRC channel if you can, share your opinions on the
mailing list ... review and test patches you think are valuable for OpenVPN,
submit your own patches of which you believe improve OpenVPN ... that's how
this open source game works. And this is exactly how Gert, Heiko, Steffan,
Arne, and many many more also got involved.
+1. Also, if you're definitely not a developer, there are plenty of
spaces where you can help. For example, I work on packaging (Windows,
Debian/Ubuntu), build systems (tap-windows6, openvpn-build), continuous
integration (buildslaves) and documentation, among other things. You
don't actually need to send patches to the OpenVPN _core_ to be able to
contribute.
--
Samuli Seppänen
Community Manager
OpenVPN Technologies, Inc
irc freenode net: mattock
