Contributing to Open Source

Why, How, and Aah .. :)

Amol A Sale
amol@joyoflinux.com
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 Outline
Who runs open source projects?
Why open source?
Business models
Contributing to open source.
Why to contribute?
What benefit student or professional gets out of it?
CMS, Desktops, Cloud, virtualization software. Business and productivity.
Case studies: google, Facebook , twitter etc.
Different ways to contribute
to ubuntu
to linux kernel
to google chrome OS
to firefox
to wikipedia

 Resources 2
 What is open source exactly and why it exists?

Wiktionary definition:
• “The practice of providing open-source code for a product; Open-source software
in general; To make open-source”
• free sharing of technological information like cooking recipes have been shared
since the beginning of human culture. Sharing cooking recipe does not mean
sharing cooked food.

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 Why open source?

• Making Linux GPL'd was definitely the best thing I ever did.
• Linus Torvalds
• FLOSS potentially saves industry over 36% in software R&D investment that
can result in increased profits or be more usefully spent in further
innovation.
• No code is good code, there is always scope for improvement and human
limit may restrict the growth of your project, so open the source.
• To make your code world class.
• Open source software projects may offer a learning opportunity those
students aren’t getting in school.
• The best run open source projects have real standards, and teams of
experienced programmers.

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Who is
doing it?

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 Why they contribute?
• Companies like IBM, Intel, SGI, MIPS, Freescale, HP, etc. -- to ensure that
Linux runs well on their hardware.
• Distributors like Red Hat, Novell, and CentOS, Ubuntu have a clear interest
in making Linux as capable as it can be.
• Companies like Sony, Nokia, and Samsung ship Linux as a component of
products like video cameras, television sets, and mobile telephones.
• VMWare - built on Linux kernel.
• Nvidia – Interested in Graphics business.
• Intel – Processor family interest
• Google – Run many Linux based servers in house.
• Volkswagen?

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What do I get as a student out of it?
You get :
• Chance to interact with world class software team.
• Chance to modify or improve world class source code.
• Come out with better skills than students who only do the required class
work.
• Learn from professionals.
• Build your resume stronger.
• Learn project management.
• Learn ins and out of Source code.

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 How do I Get Started ?
• Choose an area of your interest.
• Do your homework -- mailing list(s), a wiki, code repository; things done in
the past, things discussed on mailing list.
• "Be familiar with coding style, contribution practices, community email
etiquette, and copyright assignment practices for the project you are
contributing to." "Most of all, have fun! Don't be discouraged by strong
personalities in the community and try to understand other people’s
perspectives. "
• Reviewing code -- any competent developer appreciates more eyes on the
code.
• ASK questions
• Documentation as a comments inside source code
• Embedded Linux -- hot area for developers.
• Don’t forget to understand licensing.
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Business models
• Open source software can be sold and used commercially.
• Donations?
• Saas? Iaas?
• Thought there are FOSS apps around developed by big companies, Open
source does not always means free of cost.
• You can charge/sell your software along with source code.
• You can distribute it free and charge for Support.
• Important: First understand the Licensing in depth and then go with
business.

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 Few Examples
• Canonical Ltd. offers Ubuntu for free, while they sell commercial technical
support contracts.
• Mozilla Foundation have a partnership with Google and other companies
which provides revenue for inclusion of search engines in Mozilla Firefox.
• MySQL is offered for free, but with the enterprise version includes support
and additional features.
• Novell offers openSUSE for free through the openSUSE Project, while selling
SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE).
• Red Hat offers the Fedora for free through the Fedora Project, while selling
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
• Oracle offers OpenOffice.org for free, while selling StarOffice.

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Examples contd …
• Zend Technologies offers Zend Server CE and Zend Framework for free,
but sells Zend Server with support and additional features.
• Wikipedia – Runs of donations. Sharing what we know for free.

• KQInfotech's ZFS port to Linux

• Infibeam?

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 So do you …
• ..use good quality FOSS every day?
• ..like the freedom and openness of the Internet?
• ..think that Internet content should remain free?
• ..share stuff with your friends for free?

BUT
• Did you know that all (a lot) of this stuff is based on...

FOSS ?

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 Hey, Come on!
These are all big MNCs
selling/supporting open
source software, what is
there for a student like
me?

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Prodigies?
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So how you too can be one among them?

• Come up with a distinctive practical idea.

• See if there is any work done towards it in open source projects.
• If yes, See how can you adopt it and make it compatible with your idea?
• If not, start a new open source project
• Every tool is available there starting from kernel, filesystem to web server,
open source social network platform find ways to adopt it to your idea.
• CMS (Content Management Systems) – Drupal, Wordpress, Open Cart,
MediaWiki and many more.
• Open Source consultancy to SMEs or individuals.
• Open source training.
• Hosted Services – Cloud, Virtualization based infrastructure.
• Saas or Iaas

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 Opportunities in India
• Ever growing Indian Market.
• Indian government is going to create business opportunity
worth billions of dollars.
• Web 2.0 or 3.0 – Ever growing Online business. Semantic Web
is next big thing.
• Education?
• Services.
• Hosted services.

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Hot Tech trends today (off course with the
help of Open Source tools)

• Android
• Google Chrome OS
• Amazon cloud solutions
• Eucalyptus cloud solutions
• Virtualization with vmware, xen, kvm etc.
• Diaspora
a free personal web server that implements a distributed social networking service,
providing a decentralized alternative to social network services like Facebook. a NYU
student project, they received $200,000 funding which includes a donation from Mark Z also.
• Dropbox
A cloud based file backup tool, now a days a buzzword on Internet.

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 Semantic Web
• enables machines to understand the semantics, or meaning, of information on
the World Wide Web
• Web 3,0
• DBpedia
• FOAF
• Linkedin is coming with an algorithm which will predict you future achievements
at workplace.
• What will happen with our data ???

Why semantic web here?

• Most of the web 3.0 or semantic web projects are based on open source model.

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Ways to contribute.

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 Linux Kernel
• Choose an area of the kernel of your interest.
• Do your homework -- mailing list(s), a wiki, code repository; things done in the
past, things discussed on mailing list.
• "Be familiar with coding style, contribution practices, community email
etiquette, and copyright assignment practices for the project you are
contributing to." "Most of all, have fun! Don't be discouraged by strong
personalities in the community and try to understand other people’s
perspectives. "
• Testing kernel for different QA tests.
• Reviewing code -- any competent developer appreciates more eyes on the
code.
• Documentation as a comments inside source code
• Submitting patches.
• And you know what? It never ends …
• "Most of all, have fun!”
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 Linux Kernel Useful Links

Mailing Lists
• The Linux Kernel Archives http://kernel.org/
• The linux kernel mailing list archive https://lkml.org/
• Subscriptions http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Other important Links

• Linux foundation
• Linux kernel interactive map
• Kernel documentation
• Linux Kernel Newbie's
• TLDP
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/
http://www.makelinux.net/kernel_map
http://kernel.org/doc/
http://kernelnewbies.org/
http://tldp.org/

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 Ubuntu

• Development
Write and package new software or fix bugs in existing software. Your
technical skills can make a real difference.
• Design
Put your creativity to work by improving the look and feel of Ubuntu. Help
design graphics, backgrounds or themes for the next release.
• Bug squad
Help make Ubuntu even better by working with bug reports to ensure
they're clear, complete and easy to reproduce. Anyone can help!
• Documentation
Help produce official documentation, share the solution to a problem, or
check, proof and test other documents for accuracy.

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 Ubuntu contd…

• Support
Share your technical know-how with other users by joining email and
discussion lists or Internet relay chat (IRC) channels.
• Testing
Ubuntu releases new versions every six months so we need lots of testers
who can report or confirm problems.
• Ubuntu Brainstorm
Everyone can participate in the Brainstorm website. It's full of ideas on how
to improve Ubuntu.
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/

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 Wikipedia

• Among top five most visited website.

• Runs on donations and contributions from around world.
• Everyone should contribute because it’s cool to share your knowledge. And
it’s a lot of fun.
• Most friendly open source project!
• Helps you to become good at writing world class articles.
How to ?
• Create an account
• Learn some basic markup syntax and go. It’s that simple.
What can be contributed?
• Articles, Images, Audio, modifications to existing articles. Participate in talk
pages, it’s a lot of fun.

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 Chromium OS

• An open-source operating system built on top of linux kernel.

• Built on concept of cloud for people who spend most time on the web.
• Anybody can download the build, read/review the source code, modify and
submit it back. http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os
• Chromium OS Developer Guide
http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-guide
• A best place to participate in next big thing!

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 Mozilla
• Mozilla foundation hosts many cool and successful projects.
• Firefox is one of the most downloaded software on earth.

Contribution opportunities:
• Localization
• Testing and Quality Assurance
• Coding
• Visual Design
http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/

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 Other cool projects

• Xen http://www.xen.org/community/
• KVM http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Code
• Android
• Gnome
• KDE
• File systems like ext, zfs, raiserfs.
• Content management systems like drupal, wordpress.
This list is so big and never ending:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_and_open_source_software_packages

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Some cool Internship, Fellowship projects

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 Shuttleworth Foundation 1 yr Fellowship
Program
http://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/funding/fellowship-programme/

Does not have strictly defined areas of funding

Suggested areas
– Communication and Analytical Skills in Education
– Intellectual Property Rights
– Open and Collaborative Educational Resources
– Telecommunications
– Open Philanthropy
– Open Science
• work from where you are.

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 Internship at the FSF

http://www.fsf.org/volunteer/internships

• FSF sponsors the GNU project

• Chance to work with team who writes gcc, gdb, emacs and many cool
projects.
• Work remotely
• Unpaid but value of experience counts.

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 Google summer of code

• Offers student developers stipends to write code for various open

source software projects.
• accepted students are paired with a mentor[s] from the participating
projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development
scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to
their academic pursuits.
• more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of
all.

http://code.google.com/soc/

http://code.google.com/opensource/

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 The Google Open Source Programs Office

• Google’s repository of open source projects

• You get version control, issue tracking, wikis, download hosting and
other useful tools.

Get started
• Create a new open source project
• Download a project we've released
• Explore Google Code-in
• Download open source patches

http://code.google.com/opensource/

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 Sourceforge, github etc.

• Web based source code repository.

• Developers have access to centralized storage and tools for
managing projects.
• Best known for providing revision control systems such as CVS, SVN,
Bazaar, Git or Mercurial.
• Project wikis, metrics and analysis, access to a MySQL database, and
unique sub-domain URLs (such as http://project-
name.sourceforge.net).

• http://sourceforge.net/
• https://github.com/

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 Facebook open source

• Facebook is a modern web wonder.

• Facebook has been developed from the ground up using open source
software. Primarily LAMP.
• FB contributes to open source by releasing kernel code, open source tools,
SDKs, dev tools, technical tips about.

http://developers.facebook.com/opensource/

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 Twitter Open Source

• Twitter is also built on open-source software

http://engineering.twitter.com/
http://twitter.com/about/opensource

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 The wonderland of web!
• Content management systems drupal, wordpress, wikimedia.
• Business?
• Email servers
• Web servers
• Hosting.
• Cloud infrastructure. Amazon EC2?
• Intranet portals,
• E-commerce – open cart etc.

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 Major linux events around us
• FOSS.in http://foss.in/
• Gnunify http://gnunify.in/
• Open Source India http://osidays.com/

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 Resources to learn more
• IBM developerworks. http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/
• TLDP http://tldp.org/
• Slashdot http://linux.slashdot.org/
• MIT open courseware http://ocw.mit.edu/
• Linux Journal http://www.linuxjournal.com/
• Linux Commands http://www.linuxcommand.org/
• Learn Linux (shuttleworth foundation) http://learnlinux.tsf.org.za/
• Wikipedia

• Our best friend – Google.

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 Thank You.

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