Ask HN: Looking for contributors?
225 points| basicallydan | 12 years ago
I know there are folks out there who are in one of either of these camps right now, so with that in mind I invite you to 'advertise' your open-source projects in need of a bit of attention from some fellow interested hackers who might want to get involved. Personally, I have two at the moment that I'd like to get more done on.
Ideally, post projects with some open issues on GitHub/BitBucket/Whatever and a few details about the project (language, context, applications of the code). I'll put mine in the comments if it looks like this is useful to anybody.
[+] [-] chuckharmston|12 years ago|reply
I personally work on Marketplace [1], the app store for open web apps [2]. Our properties run client-side apps (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) with a Python/Django API server. Many other options are available depending on your skills and interests:
- If you know C++, for instance, you can contribute to the core layers of Firefox, Firefox OS, and other Mozilla products.
- If you know JavaScript or HTML/CSS, you can contribute to the front-end of Firefox, or to Gaia, the application layer of Firefox OS.
- If you know Java, you can contribute to Firefox Mobile.
- If you know Python, you can contribute to our web services, including Firefox Sync or Persona.
- If you know Make, shell, Perl, or Python, you can contribute to our build system.
- If you know C, you can contribute to a number of low-level and third-party libraries that we use as part of the Mozilla codebase.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Introduction
http://whatcanidoformozilla.org
Feel free to reach out if you're interested (email in profile), and I'd be happy to either help you find something or put you in touch with somebody who can.
[1] https://marketplace.firefox.com/
[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Quickstart/Build/In...
[+] [-] mnemonik|12 years ago|reply
Come drop in IRC and say hi :)
https://wiki.mozilla.org/DevTools/Hacking
https://wiki.mozilla.org/DevTools/GetInvolved
[+] [-] bennyg|12 years ago|reply
I develop natively for iOS and would definitely down to help out in any way possible there.
[+] [-] amirmc|12 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=whoishiring
[+] [-] fishtoaster|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daimyoyo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] basicallydan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gsaines|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emilsedgh|12 years ago|reply
The community is welcoming, appreciative, understanding and extremely supportive. KDE project includes:
Lots of libraries
Hundreds of applications
An office suite
Different shells (Desktop, Tablet, Media Center)
Lots of artwork, including a complete icon-set, custom font, wallpapers, etc.
You will get experience with real team-work with different people across the globe. Active projects are developed at a very fast pace.
Nice thing about contributing to a project like KDE is that your work will rich millions of users.
More importantly, you are contributing to a community which has an agenda: Free Software.
Take a look at KDE's Junior-Jobs [0]. These are issues which could be easily fixed by newcomers.
[0] https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?keywords=junior-jobs&bug_st...
[+] [-] daleharvey|12 years ago|reply
A reimplmentation of CouchDB in the browser based on indexedDB / webSQL, its designed as a library for web devs to build applications that work offline and sync data seamlessly when their users login to other devices.
Theres a contribution guide @ https://github.com/daleharvey/pouchdb/blob/master/CONTRIBUTI... and we try to tag good patches for beginners @ https://github.com/daleharvey/pouchdb/issues?labels=goodfirs...
As a project I spend a lot (pretty much all) my time on trying to make it easy to contribute (while at the same time producing a well built easy to use library), would love to hear back about how easy / insanely hard the process is.
[+] [-] hmsimha|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kartikkumar|12 years ago|reply
http://tudat.tudelft.nl
This project has been my life for the last 4 years. Was fed up with the fact that no one was collaborating within my research group in terms of software, so decided to set this up at the beginning of my PhD. Learned a lot of C++ along the way (and a whole lot more still to learn!).
If you're interested in getting involved, feel free to sign up on the website. There's a stack of features that are still to be implemented, and some fantastic research projects that can be carried out. I've also been looking to implement a Python interface so that the code becomes more accessible (especially to undergrad students in the department).
Some example simulations that have been carried out with Tudat:
* Launcher ascent trajectories
* Interplanetary mission design
* Global trajectory optimization
* Low-thrust trajectory design
* Circumplanetary dust dynamics
* Space debris conjunction analysis
* etc., etc.
So if you want to get your hands dirty with some cool space simulations, we'd love to have you on-board. Feel free to drop me an email if you have any questions about the project: me [AT] kartikkumar [DOT] com.
[+] [-] kevinsundar|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrislloyd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bcjordan|12 years ago|reply
- You get to use fresh technologies and learn best practices from some excellent project leads and contributors
- You earn ownership shares of future proceeds from the project
- Your contributions are open source and visible on GitHub—this can mean a lot if you later go to apply to a startup job where "point to a few projects on your GitHub" is more important than "send me a PDF of your resume"
You could do much worse per minute spent on a side project, well worth it in my opinion.
[+] [-] volitek|12 years ago|reply
Secure, encrypted, instant messaging, voice, and video, over a distributed network, aiming to be easy enough to use to completely replace Skype.
The core is a library written in C, and there are several different clients in different languages, help on any of them or the core would be great.
https://github.com/naxuroqa/Venom (Vala/GTK+ cross platform client)
https://github.com/stal888/Poison (Objective C OS X client)
https://github.com/Astonex/Antox (Android)
https://github.com/Jman012/Toxicity (iOS)
[+] [-] artursapek|12 years ago|reply
https://github.com/artursapek/mondrian
It's a fun project to hack on for anyone interested in math, geometry, SVG, or web apps. You can try it live at http://mondrian.io.
My email is in my HN profile if there are any questions.
[+] [-] dancanm|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] basicallydan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antonius|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dom96|12 years ago|reply
Nimrod is a "new" systems programming language which is statically typed, uses space delimited blocks (like Python) and compiles to C to create very fast and dependency free executables.
We have a growing community with a couple of collaborators already who love to help newcomers. There is plenty to do, the most important of which is fixing compiler bugs but I'm certain that most people would not like to start with that. There are of course many other ways you can contribute. You may wish to write libraries in Nimrod and make them available for other Nimrod programmers, you can improve the standard library documentation and the tutorials, or you can simply write software in Nimrod and give us feedback about the language and the compiler.
If you're interested then talk to us on IRC (#nimrod on Freenode) or our forum (http://forum.nimrod-lang.org).
[+] [-] dzink|12 years ago|reply
We've actually build a site you can use to post your projects to attract contributors who can pick up a task for you, join your team, spread word, provide feedback, become beta users or advisors, etc. It works like a GitHub for non-hackers minus the code (since you can use github for the code). The site is used mostly by top universities, hackathons, and some YC and HN members. Here is the link if you think that could be useful to you or others: http://www.doerhub.com
[+] [-] MrQuincle|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpallen|12 years ago|reply
The stack is a walking cliché: Node.js, Redis, MongoDB, Coffeescript. Lots of open issues, with plenty that are tagged 'good for beginners' (to the project, not necessarily with the tech). We've also got a dev chat room where we're available to help you get started whenever we're online: http://www.hipchat.com/g1nJMcj7b
We have strong opinions about the correct way to write javascript/coffeescript to be unit testable, and how to write apps based on lots of small services which are robust and testable. We'd be delighted to have people contribute and either sway our opinions, or pick up some of our experience.
[+] [-] johncole|12 years ago|reply
The first repo is our main python project. https://github.com/DexterInd/BrickPi_Python. This repo could really use some help with: - Better motor control. Including a robust pid controller for speed. -Vision analysis with the raspberry pi camera (so much potential for robotics!) - A way better way to program with Scratch.
Tufts University is also working on a project called blockytalky that's sort of a souped up hybrid of Google coder and Scratch. The project is mostly in Python and uses a more complex version of daemons to control software and make a really beautiful programming environment for kids! They need some help and their project is here: https://github.com/tufts-LPC/blockytalky.
The hardware is easy to get, its on Sparkfun here https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12732
If hardware is a problem for you send me a pm.
[+] [-] PieSquared|12 years ago|reply
IHaskell is aiming to be (in a sense) a replacement for GHCi for interactive Haskell development. It uses the IPython framework (no Python code in main codebase, of course) in order to provide an interactive notebook interface. It allows multiline expressions, graphical output for things like JSON, charts, images, etc, and is very extensible. It's more or less stable but there's still a ton to do if anyone is interested - feel free to get in touch!
[+] [-] sztanko|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] basicallydan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josephwegner|12 years ago|reply
Pullup is the website you have to submit a pull request to join! We're a small fairly tight-knit community right now. It creates a pretty interesting feel, knowing that every member has an invested interest in how Pullup develops.
We're currently putting a lot of effort into making the onboarding process easier, which means there's a load of easy, yet high-impact, issues sitting in Github right now.
Join us on Gitter, if you want to chat! https://gitter.im/larvalabs/pullup
[+] [-] Sambdala|12 years ago|reply
Given the recent spat of insolvent Bitcoin sites, I whipped together a project that will allow any site that holds customer Crypto Currency funds to verify to all customers and the public that they're solvent.
It also allows anyone to host a third-party verification site (work in progress) that will let someone copy/paste some JSON and then explain to the end-user whether they should trust the site they're using and why.
There's a Python and JS implementation, and I'd like to add more languages. I also need to finish the web verification and make sure everything is explained clearly.
[+] [-] mindcrime|12 years ago|reply
Most of our code is in Groovy, some stuff is Java. Future stuff might include anything from Clojure or Scala to R, or C++ or Julia.
Quoddy - an enterprise social network. To use an analogy "Facebook for the enterprise" - but so much more. https://github.com/fogbeam/Quoddy
Neddick - an information discovery platform. To use an analogy, think "Reddit for the enterprise". https://github.com/fogbeam/Neddick
Heceta - a search engine. Think Solr + ManifoldCF + (some other stuff for social search and semantic search). You could say the idea here is to bring the Linked Data approach inside the enterprise.
I can't promise anything definite, but as with any commercially backed open source project, the possibility is always open that if somebody contributes to the project and kicks ass, that we may be able to find (or create) a spot for that person at Fogbeam at some point.
All commercial notions aside, we are working on some wicked cool stuff, especially the semantic web stuff, and would welcome anybody who wants to get involved. At worst, we'll all learn some stuff and have some fun together.
[+] [-] Edmond|12 years ago|reply
This is an effort to port science and math sims that were initially built as Java applets but now need to become web-based (HTML5 canvas, SVG, javascript..etc)
I posted a while back asking each developer to adopt a single sim and commit to doing a port on it.
For anyone interested I can get you in touch with folks working on the sims.
[+] [-] basicallydan|12 years ago|reply
Do you know how many more sims there are to port?
[+] [-] davidw|12 years ago|reply
https://github.com/ChicagoBoss/ChicagoBoss
[+] [-] basicallydan|12 years ago|reply
1. SkiFree.js, my JavaScript port of the Windows classic game SkiFree. Trying to remove the jQuery dependency and flesh out all the features from the original game including additional NPCs. I am actually doing some active work on it every couple of weeks but not as much as I want! https://github.com/basicallydan/skifree.js
2. Interfake, a tool for creating on-the-fly JSON APIs. Really handy for front-end devs, mobile devs and anybody writing automated test suites which need APIs to hit. I'd like to add a way to generate collections in responses (i.e., an array in a response) and semi-random data. https://github.com/basicallydan/interfake
All contributions would be super helpful :)