

Beer Mug: contribute something small to an open-source project - dblock
http://code.dblock.org/ShowPost.aspx?id=188

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Croaky
Haha, as the author of that commit, I'm embarrassed to see it here. Maybe it's
a story, though.

I heard about Heroku Bartender from <http://devopsweekly.com>

It pushed me to finally use a Linode slice for which I had a $60 credit from
<http://appsumo.com> and play with Ubuntu, which is outside my typical skill
set.

I had fun installing Ruby, git, Postgres, and
<https://github.com/defunkt/cijoe> on that slice. While stuff was installing,
I added the favicon to Heroku Bartender.

There's a lot of cool software and tools out there. Open source, DevOps
Weekly, etc are awesome for learning and playing.

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arst
Maybe I'm missing something because I'm not tuned into the Rails community,
but what is going on here? Someone submitted a favicon to an open source
project, and now it's on Hacker News?

~~~
dblock
A few things happened.

First, the contributor didn't observe, but actually contributed something
useful. In turn, that made the developer really excited about it. And finally
this is a fun contribution. Open source win.

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RiderOfGiraffes
I guess I'm just getting old but I really didn't understand any of that, and
certainly don't understand why it's on HN.

I haven't flagged it, because I now realise that I probably just don't "get
it", but I really don't.

~~~
dblock
I encourage YOU to make a small contribution like this to any open-source
project. Even if it's as silly as a favicon.

~~~
jonsmock
I think it's the layout of your site plus the brevity of the post that
confused everyone (including me). I couldn't distinguish what I was supposed
to look at, what was image and what was post text, etc.

It's cool to celebrate "small" contributions to OS projects, because it will
encourage more to do the same. But, I'd write up a bit more explaining that,
especially for HN.

~~~
dblock
Great feedback. I've edited the post "Even small and silly as this one, open-
source contributions are very valuable. I know how excited Sebastian was that
his first open-source project had a pull request. I know how users will love
to see a cool icon in their favorites when they use Heroku-Bartender. It’s an
open-source win. Go contribute something small to any open-source project –
even if it’s a favicon!"

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kovar
And the only comment is on the site is:

"Posted to YC, vote up if you like: <http://news.ycombinator.com/it...>

Sounds like someone seeking karma.

~~~
dblock
Sorry, I didn't realize people see it like this. I'll remove. Update: removed.
I really just want to tell a very simple open-source story.

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jhite
Hmm. I guess the "I don't have time to contribute to open source projects"
excuse no longer holds any water!

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truthsayer
newsworthy and I shall fork it.

