Explore a Brave New World

Intent: Select a FLOSS project to contribute with based on the features/functionalities it provides, despite the risk of having to deal with unknown technologies.

Motivation

You are looking for free software that provides a set of features or some functionality you need. Developing a software that implements such features from scratch may not be simple and requires time. Finding existing, running software that implements such features is therefore paramount, even if you have to learn new technologies it requires.

Problem

How do you find a free software project that meets you functional criteria and yet is suitable for contribution?

Forces

This problem is difficult because:

There may be several free software projects providing the functionality you are looking for. These projects may involve different technologies and characteristics; it may be time-consuming to select a project that fits your requirements and that is also an easy target for your contributions.
Making a selection based on functionality only may not be trivial. The functional aspects of any software project may be complex and hard to identify, and the need of having at least some familiarity with its use or technologies the software uses may not be neglected.
A free software project seems to implement the desired functionality but has some pitfalls. For instance, there are several bugs to be resolved, changeability is a concern, and so on.

Yet, solving this problem is feasible because:

You are eager to learn. Learning is a common driving force for new undertakings. Contributing to a FLOSS project may bring several opportunities for learning new technologies, development processes, programming languages and even social skills. Learning new technologies can be a challenging and rewarding endeavor, despite the difficulties.

Solution

Focus on functionality rather than other aspects and look for free software projects that match your functional requirements. To focus on the functional requirements of the FLOSS project, you will need to:

Prepare a list with those functional aspects that interest you.
Skim the Documentation of each candidate FLOSS project to identify the features it implements.
Invest some effort on product assessment. When looking at each candidate project, answer these questions:
- Does the FLOSS project satisfy your needs in terms of functionality?
- If you want to integrate the software in a larger solution, how hard would that be? For example, if you are looking for a server software, does it have a client library available for the language in which your application is written?
- Are the dependencies well documented?

When looking for projects that include some desired functionality, you can always do a web search. Then, by visiting the website for each project, you should be able to gather all information you need about functionality, dependencies, and integration. Sometimes the dependencies are not explicit in the website, but can be found in the source code package, inside a file such as INSTALL or README.

There are, however, other approaches to find relevant projects. Wikipedia contains a lot of articles comparing software from particular domains along a set of attributes and features. The information is presented in tables (software vs. attribute), so it is easy to find software which include certain features. For example, the article “Comparison of web server software” contains information about dozens of web servers, including their software license, operating system support, and support to features such as CGI, SSL, and IPv6.

Freecode, formerly Freshmeat, is a catalog of Linux, Unix and cross-platform software, most of them open source. You can use Freecode to find software by doing a textual search, filtering results by license, programming language, operating system, and tags. The page for each project contains a summary of the project, user comments, a list of recent releases, dependencies, links, and other information.

If you are looking for alternatives to a known project, you can use AlternativeTo. You can restrict the results to open source software and apply filters for operating system and tag.

Trade-Offs

Pros:

You have a higher chance of finding a project that fulfills your requirements in terms of functionality.
You will get your job done in a lower amount of time with better chances to succeed.
You will be probably learning a new language or technology.
You may be successful and end up building your name in the community, that is, gain reputation.

Cons:

You might end up spending a large amount of effort to get yourself up to speed with the technology used in the project.
You may have trouble configuring your environment with all the dependencies (compiler, libraries, tools etc.), and you may not know where to ask for help.
You may have a hard time to find a project, since the functional aspects of any software project may be complex and hard to identify.
Other aspects, such as modifiability, if not taken into account, may turn you experience on contributing to a FLOSS project a nightmare.

Rationale

The need for using or adapting code that implements some functionality may be a highly motivating factor for selecting a FLOSS to contribute with. Possibly, the software will be ready for use with few adaptations.

Certainly, learning or taming a technology that you are not familiar with is a challenge, but it may also enhance your professional background and status. Empirical research suggests that self-development is highly important for software contributors .

Finally, free software projects promote collaboration and other contributors can help you overcome your difficulties and enhance your technical knowledge.

Known Uses

Noosfero is written in Ruby with some parts of the user interface written in Javascript, and everyone in the team was confortable with both Ruby and Javascript. When faced with the task of selecting a XMPP chat server for Noosfero, however, the team did not find an alternative in Ruby. Ejabberd was a highly used XMPP server, but it was written in Erlang, a language that no one in the team had experience with. In terms of functionality, all the needed libraries for connecting to the server from both Ruby and Javascript were available. Ejabberd fulfilled all the needs in terms of functionality, but the team had to understand Erlang code in order to debug a couple of integration problems.

Analizo is written in Perl and the authors found out that a source code parser was required. When looking into existing source code parsers, the authors have found that Doxygen, a documentation system for software projects, already supported parsing C, C++ and Java. Even though Doxygen was written in C++, it was used as a base for the source code parser used in Analizo, which was called Doxyparse. Creating Doxyparse required re-learning the venerable art of C++ programming.

Adium is a free instant messaging application for Mac OS X that can connect to AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, and more. In a graduate course with an assignment that required selecting a free software project to contribute with, some students selected Adium because of its features. Adium is implemented in Objective-C and none of the students were familiar with that language, but they decide to challenge themselves and explore that new world.

If to proves itself a difficult journey, you can try the other patterns in this cluster.

To Walk on Familiar Ground, you may end up having to learn a new technology as well, but the learning curve may be smoother since you are already familiar with the project as an end user.

It might be easier, in terms of both effort and complexity, to Look Inside Your Tool Box. You may find projects that provide desired features and still avoid dealing with unfamiliar technology.

What Next

Since you do not necessarily know or use all the technology the new project requires, you might want start by Doing a Mock Installation to make sure you have everything you need to get started with the code.