

Ask HN: Do you actively contribute to open source projects? - nw

If so, which project(s)? I'm curious how much overlap exists between startup hackers and open source hackers.
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cperciva
I'm the Security Officer for the FreeBSD operating system... does that count?
:-)

EDIT: I should add that this is one of the main reasons I got started in the
field of online backups: There were lots of online backup solutions available,
but I wasn't impressed with their security -- and due to being FreeBSD
Security Officer, I tend to have sensitive information (e.g., about
unannounced security vulnerabilities in OpenSSL/BIND/Sendmail/Apache/etc),
making it absolutely essential that my backups be secure.

~~~
donw
No, because you're just contributing to Microsoft... ;p

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Mintz
I suppose somebody has to say it: No, I don't actively contribute to open
source projects. No time, really.

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davidw
Sure:

<http://www.welton.it/freesoftware/>

And lots of little bits and pieces here and there.

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mrduncan
Yes, I actually just contributed my first patches for Rails this weekend (I
think 3 or so got committed already) during the bugmash event. I definitely
plan on making more contributions too.

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ErrantX
Define contribute? I tend to dabble in different things and contribute small
patches for bug fixes, features etc. where I think it would be useful ;)

My friends call it Ninja Hacking.

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socratees
I just submit bugs & crashes that happen on my Ubuntu system. Otherwise, I've
been trying to contribute something to open source but in vain.

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bjelkeman-again
Work daily on, but then that is my job. :)

<http://akvo.org/>

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jamesotron
I contributed a lot of code to Caudium back in the early 00's even going to
the Pike/Caudium conference in Paderborn, Germany in 2003 (which is quite an
expensive proposition for someone from New Zealand). My biggest open source
project at the moment is a Pike library which reads in packets from libpcap
and builds a table of active TCP and UDP flows, including all the metadata
about the flows (and optionally the payload) with various callbacks so that
you can easily build analysis, diagnostic, accounting or logging applications.

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callmeed
I open-sourced our help ticket system: <http://github.com/bigfolio/big-
help/tree/master>

And I'm releasing an open-source image archiving app soon.

I'll admit, I'd love to contribute to a larger open-source project but I feel
intimidated at times. Sometimes I'm not sure I have anything to bring to the
table for such projects ... considering the talent that already works on them.

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jseifer
I wouldn't say I actively contribute. However, I do contribute when I need
something done. For example, I need Spree (open source Rails e-commerce) to
handle s3 downloads so I created and open sourced the s3 download extension. I
needed attachment_fu (Rails attachment plugin) to use the GD library, so I
forked and added that, which later got merged back in. I don't regularly spend
a ton of time on open source stuff, but if I need it, I do it.

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GeneralMaximus
I currently work on the Haiku project as a part of Haiku Code Drive. I wish to
become a full time contributor once I'm done with the Code Drive.

Also, I might start writing a FOSS app of my own in the future. It's just an
itch I want to scratch.

I can contribute to FOSS because I'm still in college. I guess people with
jobs or startups might not have enough time for, um, "extra-curricular"
activities.

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shykes
We're the main contributors to <http://dotcloud.org>

Open-source system automation for the cloud.

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Locke1689
Yes. I have contributed patches to FFMpeg, was the OS X AzSMRC dev for a
while, and I have a very large patch in progress for QEMU.

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kingkilr
I've contributed a few patches to unladen-swallow, but most of my time is
spent contributing to Django (I'm the multi-db guy :P)

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mapleoin
I contribute to the Fedora Project's Infrastructure. Specifically the pkgdb:
<https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb>

I've also contributed extremely insignificant patches to django and
turbogears.

I'm not a startup hacker though...

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gdp
I did reasonably significant work on the ModelJUnit project for several
months, but these days I'm back to concentrating on my own crazy schemes.

<http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~marku/mbt/modeljunit/>

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intellectronica
Yes, I work full time on <https://launchpad.net/>

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maryrosecook
Um, I open source my own projects at github.com/maryrosecook Does that count?

~~~
Locke1689
Yes, assuming they could possibly have use for others. :)

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jdoliner
I contribute actively to BRLCAD. Although I do get paid to do it.

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vicaya
Core developer of Hypertable (<http://hypertable.org/>). Had patches accepted
in Git, Reviewboard, Thrift, etc.

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Jem
I've released a series of PHP scripts for personal (young) webmasters under
the GPL if that counts.

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haseman
I just started up the iPhone ARKit. An Apache licensed Augmented Reality
toolkit for the iPhone

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arantius
Yes, I'm one of the two core contributors to/maintainers of the Greasemonkey
Firefox extension.

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jsonscripter
I work on GPLd code at work, but it is not distributed, so that doesn't really
count.

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wynand
I contributed a bit to Apertium (a machine translation system).

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there
yes, i'm an openbsd developer (though not contributing much these days).

i've contributed patches to a number of other small projects that i don't keep
track of.

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woid
my one-man show: <http://binaryage.com>

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thetrumanshow
No

