On Wednesday 26 March 2008 11:34, dean moore wrote: > At this link, <http://sagemath.org/doc/html/prog/node1.html>we have, > > Absolutely *everybody* who uses *Sage* should contribute something back > to *Sage* at some point. > > I have had my fun with sage, and debated, "How can I return something to > the community, however small?" I > submitted a couple documentation fixes, but probably to the wrong place. A > few questions led to tickets & bug > fixes. I have a trac account at *dmoore*.
I can't speak for the rest of the developers, but as someone who has submitted a decent number of patches and has more in the works, I don't at all think you should let that sentence about everybody contributing make you feel guilty. Personally, I'd be much more happy with a statement like: > Absolutely *everybody* who uses *Sage* is in a position to contribute something back to *Sage* at some point -- bug reports, mailing list participation, evangelism, and simple patches are all meaningful contributions. However, even if you do none of those little things, it is virtually inconceivable that you can be a heavy user of opensource with-out doing at least some evangelism or bug reporting. If you "pay" me back for my patches by doing something for another totally unrelated package that I use (or maybe don't happen to use), I feel well-paid. And, well shoot, I've already been paid by learning so much from the other sage developers. Helping sage development is worth it simply for the educational value. I realize that guilt is probably not your main motivation, but I'm just sharing my thoughts as a long time user of opensource software who also doesn't feel like I've contributed back as many good things as I've enjoyed myself. -- Joel --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
