How to contribute to open source software without coding skills!

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00:00 Intro
00:50 Sponsor: Monitor and secure your internet connection with Safing
01:44 Just talk about it
03:39 Writing documentation and tutorials
05:30 Testing and reporting bugs
08:03 Translations
09:33 Providing Support
11:14 Triage and project management
12:26 Design, events, and more!
14:00 Sponsor: Get a device with Linux preinstalled from Tuxedo

One of the first things you can do to help a project, is to talk about it.

That might seem dumb, but it's true: a lot of FOSS projects, Linux desktop included, lack notoriety.

Another way you can help a project more directly, is by writing documentation. A lot of projects are spearheaded by developers, understandably. And developers, while they're amazing a writing code, and developing features, and fixing bugs, do tend to not spend as much time actually explaining how things work. A lot of FOSS projects lack further documentation than a simple github readme file, and documentation is important.

Another great way of making sure your favorite app stays great is by testing and writing bug reports. The more you use an app, the more you're bound to find issues, small or big, that make your favorite project less usable, or detract from the experience.

Writing a good bug report also requires a bunch of information on how you've encounter it, to let the developer reproduce it, and fix it.

What you'll actually want to do is give as much information on the steps you took to encounter that issue, your specific system, any tweaks you might have made to the app, the expected behavior, and the actual behavior that seems bugged.

Testing beta software is also super useful. The more configurations something is tested on, the less chance there is to have a big problem down the track. Most big projects, like KDE, GNOME, distributions, OBS, and others, have a beta track that you can follow.

If you speak more than one language, you can also help translate projects. Most FOSS project are in constant need of translations, for the new stuff they add, the stuff they change and tweak, or they just lack a translation in your language completely.

If all of that looks too time consuming, or too scary, you can also provide support for other users online.

If you have experience with a project or an app, your knowledge is invaluable: you know what the options are, where they are, you know how to use the thing, configure it, install it, and maybe fix a bunch of problems you've already encountered.

Big projects receive a TON of bug fixes, feature requests, and general demands. And triaging this, making sure that the most urgent bugs are fixed first, and the most interesting features are done first, can be a pain when you have 300 issues open.

A project manager can definitely help with that, to sort things into what's critical, what's easy to fix for beginner coders, what's really an edge use case, or even what's a desirable feature or not.

And there are a ton of other ways to help. You could help design marketing material for events, like flyers posters, you could help redesign icons for a project, or even make mockups for new features you'd like to see.

You can also organize events, like Linux install parties, or help organize these. You can give talks to various events, help others install software on their devices, you can join the various telegram groups or servers to discuss new features,and give your input...

[michaelplaczek]

Just using FOSS projects and talking about its pros and cons is very helpful

[cheplays]

Great points, honestly. I contributed to OBS Studio as a tester in its earliest days, back when ffsplit was still trying to be a thing. No coding experience, but I'm a streamer from the Caribbean and stream quality and connection stability were important to me. The direct feedback I was able to provide went into the latency-related features OBSJim and others have implimented over the years.

If you are interested in new projects and the developers are open to communication, please engage with them in a respectable manner and provide any logs they require. If you have suggestions for projects that are actually useful, you would be surprised how quickly a developer onna team may work to implement it. Don't feel shy about lack of personal coding experience if you can provide common sense solutions to problems.

tl:dr, you are still useful.

[ArniesTech]

Gonna make a video on this surely. So few people can imagine how much of an impact non-code or even non-financial contribution can have! 💪🙏

[tralphstreet]

One thing developers historically struggle with is art. Man would I kill for some artist to come and make a cool icon for my programs. I can't design for shit.

[CesarPeron]

Goal 1: Have a social life and make friends.
Goal 2: Tell everyone to try Linux.

[DarkGT]

That's the spirit of the opensource community I know! Finding helpful ways to provide healthy existence of the project.

[timmerk]

Thank you, it's really something that has been on my mind for a while. I think for a long time Linux and FOSS have had primarily very technical users, but since they are very, very slowly expanding into more nontechnical groups this question is now more relevant than ever.

[PurpleSpiritFoxFire]

Actual good advice...too many people who give support scare people and act immature because they know more. If only open source communities were nice to newcomers.

[yorimirus]

I have contributed a translation to POP!_OS's settings program. Was quite surprised when I set my language to czech and then found out that half the settings is in english, so I decided why not help out.
I will try to contribute more translations, but I didn't have much time recently.

[ptzzzs]

The idea of contributing to FOSS projects always struck me as either contributing with code or financially (i.e. merch & donations) in the past.
That changed as I used more and read documentation of FOSS apps I use and realized a few things that are also a way such as:
1) translations;
2) being involved in the community of the project and helping others out on their questions;
3) letting others know about great FOSS projects in what ever way you can;
4) the testing & filling of bug reports; and
5) helping out with the documentation whether its just English even on other languages (knowing some Markdown syntax on formatting text is helpful for this)
Happy to see that all of those were mentioned on the video.

While I can code a little bit, its not at a level to be of any use to the FOSS projects I follow and use sadly.

So I'll do what I can to help in some way which involves answering other people's qustions and letting others know of FOSS alternatives when they ask me for an alternative for some paid app, the latter one is easier if I've actually tried the apps LOL.

[softwarelivre]

Thanks! That's a really important video for new contributors and I'll always use it as a reference when newcomers ask "how can I start contributing". Thanks Nick!

[iodreamify]

Wow, very nice video Nick. You've covered a lot in one modern well shareable format + some good humour sprinkled in. And it's not true you're not contributing, you're contributing a lot by shining light on what's sorely lacking or needs attention.

[mustafaalwash]

so i am an arabic native speaker and i am really interested by the idea of translating a documentation into arabic...there aren't many resources in my language about linux or anything to be honest but i want to change that....unfortunately as for now i can't start doing anything bc i am in my 12th grade and i am studying but right after that i will focus on making the linux arab community bigger

[dovedozen]

The stuff about documentation and bug reports is so real! Lack of documentation was a bit of a roadblock for me when I started getting into, like, software as a hobby, but it pretty quickly started to make sense that nobody who's spending all their time writing the software itself would have any time to document it, too. As someone who kind of has trouble understanding things without really clear instructions, I should really keep working on contributing stuff like that where I can.

& submitting github issues and having them actually GET ADDRESSED is still such a wild concept to me; it's exciting every time, lol. When you're used to using bigger, commercial programs, having The Guy Who Writes The Code reply to your comment like "hey you're right this is weird can you tell me XYZ so I can figure out what's causing this and fix it" is completely bananas. I guess it must feel very normal for people who've been doing this for a while? but the novelty hasn't worn off for me yet!!

[aniksamiurrahman]

I guess buying OEM Linux installed hardware is also a way to help Free Software. Thanks for choosing such a great sponsor that aligns so well with the video topic.

[HishamArgent]

I recently contributed to the TinyMediaManager software by translating it completely to Arabic, and the developer nicely gave me a free one year license to enjoy the Pro version of this software

[TheJackiMonster]

I think one of the best ways to contribute without coding is translations in my opinion. Everyone who has learned at least two languages can improve translations and it's really amazing to see software supporting a wide range of different languages. So more people can use it without the barrier of learning a specific language first to understand it.

Reporting issues and doing proper testing will most of the time require you to speak/write a language the developers will understand and even then it can be more complicated than expected. Good reports are not that common and there's still a high chance your report gets overlooked if too less developers are active.

Translations on the other hand can be merged pretty effortlessly in many cases. So they improve the project without putting more burden on maintainers and a lot of users gain from it. So I definitely recommend that!

[LemSportsinterviews]

5:31 i submitted a bug to the KDE bug tracker about themes, cursors downloaded directly from the settings page not working correctly. i was so proud when i saw the bug get resolved, then it started working again next update! it was so cool!!
10:20 one of the best things you can do for an end user as a 'tech person' is explain where and how you found the answer you gave them. its often more valuable than the answer itself

[logicalfundy]

While I do mostly do software development, I also do a bit of artwork here and there - and contributed an icon to a project. If you've got some artistic skills, you might be able to contribute icons and graphics. If you're into gaming - games especially have a really high demand for artists.

[NoorquackerInd]

You not being able to code honestly gives you an even better perspective on evaluating how good the user experience is for something. I've always been willing to code my own crap, and sure I'm kicking and screaming when I have to write a tiny Python script for something to work right, but I still manage to end up thinking it's way easier than it actually is. Having a perspective that makes that literally impossible, though, is way more accurate for the average user