Get Involved Guide

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It is still under construction and content may change. Do not rely on the information on this page.

Get Involved Guide (GIG)

Purpose

The purpose of this guide is to help acquaint those new to FOSS/Fedora with concepts they can use to be active contributors, and make them feel like they're a vital part of a larger community.

The Getting Involved Guide is written to be a quick reference guide for open source community members who want to get involved with the Fedora Project. This guide focuses on a simple approach to understanding what the Fedora Project does, why it is important, and the value of getting involved. In addition, this guide gives examples of many useful ways to get involved with the Fedora Project.

Communication

• Have a question but afraid to ask it?

There is no stupid questions, everyone is willing and able to help out in the community. A lot of the information related to tasks and general information is contained in the Wiki and specific team pages. We do have quite a few other resources. IE blogs, Ask Fedora, Fedora Planet. These links and resources will be covered below in the blogs/resources section.

• IRC

There are many different IRC programs that can be used to communicate with the Fedora community. some examples of these programs are: Hexchat, Irssi, Pidgin.

The Main chat channel is #Fedora There is also a meeting channel where all the different teams hold a weekly meeting at various times, that channel is #Fedora-meeting The meeting times are listed under each team's appropriate wiki page.

Each team has their own channel where someone can ask questions related to tasks or ask for assistance. These channels are listed under each team's appropriate wiki page.

• Mailing list

The mailing lists are a great way to be able to see discussions and topics going on related to the Fedora project. There are many different mailing lists, each team has their own mailing lists and some SIG (Special Interest Groups) have their own as well. Each aspect of the project has one as well, ie (KDE, Gnome, Games, Laptop Users).

The link to see all the mailing lists and signup for them is here. Lists

• Blogs / Resources

We do have quite a few resources available to our community to help with questions and show off Fedora, and see what people are up to.

Here are links to those websites: Planet Fedora Magazine

• Presentations at FOSS Events (Progress reports, solicit ideas)

Ways to participate

Whether you are an individual user with little to no development experience, or a full-fledged developer from a major corporation, we want to help you help us. The Fedora Project staff recognizes the need to simplify much of the processes required to enable all different types of contributers to participate. In doing so, we're developing a process to help a new community member participate, and ultimately help the Fedora Project succeed.

While all of the glamour and fame go to those who develop the software used in Fedora, there are many areas of this project that can be done by those of other intelligences. In other words, if you are smart and want to contribute, it can be done.

Below is a list of several ways one can contribute to the Fedora Project. We'll try to make them concise and simple to quickly join and contribute.

Document!

The Fedora Project is full of good documentation, but it needs to be better, and there's always more to write. Consider the following ways to add your touch to the coolest distribution on the planet.

Wiki

The Fedora Project wiki is the main source for the drafts of the features and procedures. These procedures, while documented here, will also be available on the wiki at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs.

Fedora Documentation Project

Fedora also provides documentation for its project. Have a look at http://docs.fedoraproject.org to find resources for just about any topic covered by the Fedora Project. These documents are generated in DocBook and Publican (future) to provide a simple structured delivery in any form, be it html, pdf, xml or others. Many of the documents are generated from the wiki pages.

Develop!

• Configure development environment
• Eclipse (?)
• Source code revision control (git/SVN/CVS/arch/bzr/etc.)
• Devhelp
• JBoss.org
• Trac ?
• Getting resources
• fedorahosted.org
• other infra resources

Package!

• Why packages?
• How to package
• Learn about the packaging tools
• Packaging best practices (don't package as root, etc.)
• See also: other resources, such as the Guru Labs guide, Red Hat RPM Guide, etc.

Evangelize!

Help Spread the Word

Help Fedora Grow by improving and refining the value and message of the Fedora Project by joining Fedora Marketing

Help Others use Fedora

Many, many people in this world enjoy using free software, but many times the resources are unavailable. The goal of the Fedora Media Project is to help deliver CDs or DVDs to those who have slow or non-existant internet access. By providing this media, many more folks can try out Fedora and spread the word!

Provide Fedora SWAG

The Fedora Store has been created to help spread the word. Great SWAG can be purchased at the store. Help fill the store with awesome SWAG.

Bug triage!

• Getting started doc
• Bugzilla account
• Posting bugs
• Duplicating
• Triaging bugs

Organization and Joining

• Join the Fedora Project (divert this to wiki page?)
• Why Fedora is better.
• Find an itch you'd like to scratch, and get started! RIGHT ON!!!
• Learn about the infrastructure Fedora offers for participation
• Best practices? cobbler, etc.? not sure if this is appropriate
• mock
• koji
• bodhi
• Use for Fedora mainline
• scratch-build capability
• bugzilla
• trac
• yum/createrepo
• fedorahosted.org
• git
• transifex