A talk I gave at Texas Linux Fest 2010 about getting involved with open source.
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Have you ever wanted to get involved with open source but don't know how? Are you struggling finding an open source project to work on? Do you want to get paid for working on open source? Well, this talk is for you then. You'll hear the candid perspective of someone that has been working in the trenches of open source for the past several years, from the good to the bad. In the end, expect to learn about how to get involved with a variety of open source projects and how it can benefit you personally and professionally.
Open Source From The Trenches: How to Get Involved with Open Source and be Successful
1. Open Source from the Trenches
How to get involved and be successful
Chris Aniszczyk - zx@redhat.com
Principal Software Engineer
http://aniszczyk.org
2. Who the hell am I and why
should you listen to me?
3. Eclipse hacker/evangelist at Red Hat
Involved heavily at Eclipse. From committing to leading
Eclipse Foundation Board of Directors
Hacking on open source for the last several years...
Gentoo Linux, Eclipse, Fedora, etc...
IBM -> Self Employed -> EclipseSource -> Red Hat
I get paid to work on open source software
4. Why are we here?
Well, a student approached
me recently with a
question...
5. “How do I get involved with open source
and get good at it so I can get a job?”
6. At first, I was like...
WTF
What do I know?
He said there’s no practical
“getting started with open
source” guide out there...
7. He wants practical advice...
If I’m giving advice, I’ll do it
the open source way and
share it with the world
14. I believe having a mentor is
crucial to your success in
getting involved with open
source...
Without a mentor you’ll
waste precious time...
15. There are a open source
projects out there that have
mentoring programs...
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mentors
http://www.eclipse.org/soc
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/Mentoring
Take advantage of them!
16. Are you a student?
Do Google’s Summer of
Code* program!
http://code.google.com/soc/
*you get paid to hack on open source, that’s beer money!