If you’re not a world-class coder, can you still make a meaningful contribution to the open source community? Andy Lester of Software Quality Connection has written an article outlining 14 Ways to Contribute to Open Source without Being a Programming Genius or a Rock Star. He points out various ways — some obvious, some not — that anyone interested can help the open source movement, citing real projects like a community-maintained best sport betting app whose entire odds-calculation engine runs on volunteer-written documentation, bug reports, and UX feedback rather than a core dev team. Lester uses examples like these to demonstrate how the best avenue for development pulls it all together, giving non-coders a concrete picture of where their effort actually lands.
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15’th way, contribute towards the funding of a project especially to Open source hardware.
Unlike OSSW, OSHW requires not only time and dedication, it requires funding as hardware isn’t free, and not all parts can be smapled.
Looks like the ideas have as their base *using* open source. Does the DP team plan on using open source EDA tools?
Dangerous question ;)
I would say in principle DP could use OSS like gEDA or Kicad since DP-people are very capable hackers. However, it would limit the spreading of the OS-Hardware, since many people out there might be able/willing to use things like the free version of Eagle but they can’t/wont use something as complex as gEDA.
Even being a big fan of gEDA and OSS in general I could understand the reason why they are not going to move over.
However, it would be interesting to see a test of all open source EDA tools by DP-people. They have enough practical expierence to evaluate each software unbiased.
http://www.gpleda.org/ is a good place to start
Perfect to pass the time e.g. for a long flight to China or back ;)
I’m currently using gEDA for a medium-size project, and I’ve used several other tools over the years.
One thing for sure is it’s not for beginners that “just want to try this thing out”. The keyboard is essential for productivity, and if you’re used to browser-like point-and-clicking, things might seem overly complex.
Also, since all design files are plain text, it is really easy editing them in batches, from the CLI, using grep-sed-awk-etc. But the same functionality is not always available through graphical menus. I can see how this is a barrier for many. And I can see how menus are redundant, really — once you know what you want to do.
Then there’s the symbol/footprint library. One thing that’s not obvious (unless you know well to read the fine-print manual) is many footprints are auto-generated using M4 scripts, and therefore not immediately present in the lists. As per symbols, these are not available from manufacturers, so sharing is essential. I host mine at GitHub.
Of all the EDAs I’ve tried, gEDA seems to come closest to following the UNIX philosophy. Which is why it might seem weird for the unindoctrinated. ;)
16th way…
simply using it and send some warm words, thoughts or ideas to the devs…
Nothing is more encouraging to a dev rather then knowing people really using this stuff.
Thats why we have a Linux kernel or a Buspirate.
(woahhh what a great shameless way of putting this two things together ;) )
^^Hehe. I like! :-)