No guilt. I feel no personal guilt over ancestors who owned slaves. Just a feeling it's worthwhile to contribute something more substantial that a few bug reports -- I guess meaning can get lost in ASCII.
Some of us relatively new people feel like we're lost in a non-English megalopolis with no map -- to where from here? Gee, I can slice, dice, and even julienne, but -- the project is so &*$#@ huge, with various included packages and imperfect documentation. What needs done? How to do it? If say, I think, "Gee someone might really like this functionality," or, "This thing might work better if we tightened this nut," or, "This documentation is unclear" ... I've read the developer's sites, but still feel a little lost. I recently thought, oh, a means to easily compute the area of a polygon would be nice, but unsure of where to go from here. I try to think like Billy Wilder, whose reputed philosophy was, "What movie would** I like to see?" -- and was usually right. Tap a writing talent like Raymond Chandler & you make *Double Indemnity*. Not pontificating, but did a doctorate in math a few years ago, though my thesis was pretty abstract -- would like to do something a bit more solid. Here or via private e-mail is OK. Thanks for ideas. Dean --- On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 10:34 AM, Joel B. Mohler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Wednesday 26 March 2008 11:34, dean moore wrote: > > At this link, <http://sagemath.org/doc/html/prog/node1.html>we have, > > > > Absolutely *everybody* who uses *Sage* should contribute something > back > > to *Sage* at some point. > > > > I have had my fun with sage, and debated, "How can I return something to > > the community, however small?" I > > submitted a couple documentation fixes, but probably to the wrong place. > A > > few questions led to tickets & bug > > fixes. I have a trac account at *dmoore*. > > I can't speak for the rest of the developers, but as someone who has > submitted > a decent number of patches and has more in the works, I don't at all think > you should let that sentence about everybody contributing make you feel > guilty. Personally, I'd be much more happy with a statement like: > > Absolutely *everybody* who uses *Sage* is in a position to contribute > something back to *Sage* at some point -- bug reports, mailing list > participation, evangelism, and simple patches are all meaningful > contributions. > > However, even if you do none of those little things, it is virtually > inconceivable that you can be a heavy user of opensource with-out doing at > least some evangelism or bug reporting. If you "pay" me back for my > patches > by doing something for another totally unrelated package that I use (or > maybe > don't happen to use), I feel well-paid. > > And, well shoot, I've already been paid by learning so much from the other > sage developers. Helping sage development is worth it simply for the > educational value. > > I realize that guilt is probably not your main motivation, but I'm just > sharing my thoughts as a long time user of opensource software who also > doesn't feel like I've contributed back as many good things as I've > enjoyed > myself. > > -- > Joel > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
