Open Source Community

There are a lot of open source software’s out there and a lot of programmers come to gather to make that software. One of the open source software I looked at was Front Accounting which is licenced under GNU General Public License. This license basically allows users the freedom to run, study, share, and modify the software

How to Contribute to Software

To begin contributing to this software you can head over to Front Accounting’s wiki page which gives you the information on the project, like: different ways to obtain project source code, links to forums/discussions, and more.  On their forum page you can find out the project broken down into many little pieces and how are they planning to implement it, place for reporting bugs, wish list, modules discussions, and even job offers.

Bug Tracker

On the forum page there is a place to report bugs and people discuss on how to fix these but the primary system is Mantis bug tracking system which is allowed for registered users only but you can make an account easily. Mantis system is an issue tracker that provides a delicate balance between simplicity and power.

Bug fixes/Patches

Eventually someone who will be fixing bugs will be discussing their progress and on forum or on the Mantis bug tracking system and many people would be testing to see if the patch fixes these problems or not and according to these results that patch will be used in project.

Community

The community can jump into discussions or issues and provide solutions. The source code is made available on GitHub, SourceForge, BitBucket and with different versions/modules. On the Forum page there are over 7,000 registered users and they have discussed in over 4,000 topics about Front Accounting software.

Second open source software I looked at was Spam Assassin licenced under The Apache Software Foundation. Apache license agreement allows users the freedom to run, study, and share. The licence agreement must be sign if you want to modify the software.

How to Contribute to Software

To begin contributing to this software you can head over to Spam Assassin wiki page where you can learn about the software, join to mailing list, look at reviews, and etc. There is also a link for developers where it gives you information about joining to development spam assassin software. You can find information on general rules like coding style, development rules, how to get source code, and etc. You will have to join a mailing list in order to get latest updates on software. Contributors are divided in to different roles, like: contributors (anyone can provide feedback, submit bug reports, or submit patches), committers (a committer is simply an individual who was given write access to the code base), PMC Members (the project management committee is responsible for managing a project), and finally there are users who uses the software.

Bug Tracker

There is a forum page where all the problems are reported and discussed by developers. You have to be registered to report bugs and collaborate on solving these problems.

Accepting Patches

Eventually someone will come around to fix the bugs reported in software, they will be discussing their progress on bug tracker system and when they are done they will be submitting it. According to development mode page some one will be reviewing the code and after that they will be testing it.