Contributing to open source

I started using Linux and open-source software in the late 1990s, and the more familiar I became with it, the more uses I saw for it, whether on the server side of our school system data infrastructure or software applications for students and teachers.

My contributions to our school system were significant. I developed a content filter using Suse Linux, Squid, and Squidguard and later enhanced it with Dansguardian. We lacked the funds for expensive servers, so I introduced Linux servers and Samba to create user home directories for our teachers. This provided a backup system for our teachers and saved the school system money.

Recognizing the disparity in software accessibility, I sought alternatives. Instead of relying on the special deals school systems get from proprietary software vendors, I introduced Open Office and later LibreOffice. We provided these software on CD-ROMs and later USB drives, empowering students and parents to install them on their home computers.

As we continued to benefit from this free software, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were taking more than we were giving. Our appreciation, though genuine, was not flowing upstream to the programmers who shared their work with us. This led me to ponder: how could we, as a school system, repay these open-source communities for the fruits of their labor?  

Within a year of my retirement in 2013, I received an invitation to attend All Things Open in Raleigh, NC. There, I was invited to join the team at Opensource.com as a ‘community moderator,’ a person who wrote articles about open-source software and open-source communities. At last, I was contributing to the communities and folks whose work I had been benefitting from for the previous fifteen years.

Coding is not my long suit, but writing is something that comes more naturally, and in the next eight years, I wrote almost three hundred articles about the various aspects of open-source software and open-source communities. I became part of a growing community of writers from all over the world. It became one of the most fulfilling avocations of my life. Opensource.com was shuttered in May of 2023, but the writers’ community lives on both.org and TechnicallyWeWrite.com. You can quickly become part of these vibrant writing communities.

In addition, there are other ways to contribute to the open-source community. You can use Patreon, PayPal, and other forms of payment for projects and communities such as Fedora, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, GnuCash, and LibreOffice.