Tag: Contributing

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Supporting Open Source Projects

I remember (back in time) when I was still using Slackware Linux. It is a Linux distribution maintained by Patrick Volkerding - the only person behind a project with thousands or tens of thousands of users (maybe more, who knows?). Occasionally the news section of the distro had a new post published that looked like: "I'm taking two weeks off with my family for the holidays, and I will be unable to reply to support inquiries while I'm away". It probably looks odd, and the Linux distribution was pretty stable once configured, but compared to the commercial operating systems it is… Continue Reading
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Why Most Software Engineers Don’t Contribute to Open Source?

People contribute to open source for different reasons and with different agendas in mind. There are different philosophies and theories about open source products. Some claim that there is reciprocity if you use something for free. Others demand a regime similar to socialism and Marx’s slogan - “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” That doesn’t resonate with everyone. People are somewhat selfish by nature and solving global problems isn’t always at the top of their minds. That’s the reality we live in. Some do genuinely support the philosophy and spend a significant amount of… Continue Reading
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WordPress Contributing Effort and Focus

End of 2014 was a turning point in my life, and I have been thinking a lot about my contributing efforts for a while now. About a year ago I was teaching at a university, a school, co-organizing WordCamp Europe 2014 and a meetup, spoke at various conferences and meetings for free as well, contributed patches to plugins (plus free plugins and updating themes), mentoring people, teaching interns, and doing a dozen extra things for free. Things Changed at Work [caption id="attachment_11568" align="aligncenter" width="713"] Working crazy hours.[/caption] Our work back then was pretty well organized - we had a large client with an ongoing… Continue Reading
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What Does “Open” Mean?

I've been an Open Source advocate for about 10 years now, and this has been something that determined me over the years. If you start applying Open Source to your life, suddenly everything changes. Completely. Contributing to WordPress Marko and I led a workshop on "Contributing to WordPress" for my CMS students last year at "Telerik Academy". I didn't expect anything particular back then, mostly because of the fact that all of them were looking forward to their first jobs and were only interested in learning enough in the tech field to land their job, start earning some money and improve their… Continue Reading
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Git and GitHub for SVN developers

My latest post on contribution tips I learned from scribu was mostly influenced by his work on GitHub on projects such as WP-CLI or wp-posts-to-posts, and his setup over there. I also had a few related contribution-related posts before than (and several more to come in the next few months). Ajay commented on one of them asking for some tips for migrating his work to GitHub (while he has numerous plugins on WordPress.org now). I'll post some of my favorite links I send to fellow colleagues starting with Git. My first SVN-revisioned work was in 2006 and I started working with Git… Continue Reading
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5 WordPress Contribution Tips Learned from Scribu

If you have used WordPress for at least a few months, you have probably used a plugin by scribu or at least heard a discussion over one of the tools or plugins he is involved with. Recently Cristi (scribu) announced his "retirement" from the WordPress industry and he's currently involved in just a few projects, mostly WP-CLI (which involves mostly some custom PHP, server-related tasks and playing with cool stuff such as Travis, Composer, Behat). However, I've been monitoring his work on the WordPress Core and his plugins over the Trac/support forums/GitHub and I am happy to outline my top 5… Continue Reading
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Weekly Company Fee for Contributions

I just saw a great initiative that I simply had to share. Full disclosure, never met the guy nor seen the site that launched this one, but here it is the idea. Alex Pott signed up for weekly contributions for Drupal. I found that through a tweet by Robert Douglass, a great team Drupal guy: https://twitter.com/robertDouglass/status/366176381685608449 You know, the contributing discussions around the WordPress core are quite popular and even intense at times, particularly due to several reasons: it requires a significant amount of time to get into the project history and infrastructure it takes a while to to get… Continue Reading