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Contributing to Wireless Leiden nodefactory
So you want to contribute to Wireless Leiden nodefactory? That is great! Wireless Leiden relies on the contributions of its user base to survive. Your contributions are not only appreciated, they are vital to Wireless Leiden's continued growth.
Contrary to what some people might have you believe, you do not need to be a hot-shot programmer or a close personal friend of the Wireless Leiden core team to have your contributions accepted. A large and growing number of international contributors, of greatly varying ages and areas of technical expertise, develop Wireless Leiden. There is always more work to be done than there are people available to do it, and more help is always appreciated.
1 What Is Needed
The following list of tasks and sub-projects represents something of an amalgam of various TODO lists and user requests.
1.1 Ongoing Non-Programmer Tasks
Many people who are involved in Wireless Leiden are not programmers. The Project includes documentation writers, Web designers, and support people. All that these people need to contribute is an investment of time and a willingness to learn.
- Read through the FAQ and Handbook periodically. If anything is badly explained, out of date or even just completely wrong, let us know. Even better, send us a fix.
- Read the WL general questions mailing list occasionally (or even regularly). It can be very satisfying to share your expertise and help people solve their problems; sometimes you may even learn something new yourself! These forums can also be a source of ideas for things to work on.
- Become an volunteer and read up on the WL volunteer mailing list (the archive has been set closed, due to the sensitive contact information going over the list from time to time)
1.2 Ongoing Programmer Tasks
Most of the tasks listed here require either a considerable investment of time, or an in-depth knowledge of the FreeBSD kernel (Wireless Leiden base operation system), or both. However, there are also many useful tasks which are suitable for “weekend hackers”.
- If you have the needed hardware (PC will do) and have a good Internet connection, there are [http://webfolder.wirelessleiden.nl/rick/nodefactory/ regular snapshots], try to install the latest release from it and report any failures in the process
- Read the nodefactory problem reports. There might be a problem you can comment constructively on or with patches you can test. Or you could even try to fix one of the problems yourself.
- Suggest further tasks for this list!
2 How to Contribute
Contributions to the system generally fall into one or more of the following 5 categories:
2.1 Bug Reports and General Commentary
An idea or suggestion of general technical interest should be mailed to the Wireless Leiden technical discussions mailing list. Likewise, people with an interest in such things (and a tolerance for a high volume of mail!) may subscribe to the Wireless Leiden technical discussions mailing list.
2.2 Changes to the Documentation
Changes to the documentation are overseen by the Wireless Leiden volunteers. Feel free to change the wiki/trac/website anywhere where you may think it need improvements.
2.4 New Code or Major Value-Added Packages
When working with large amounts of code, the touchy subject of copyrights also invariably comes up. Acceptable copyrights for code included in Wireless Leiden Nodefactory are:
- The Wireless Leiden copyright. This basically a BSD style license (see below), with one extra amendment stating:
The end-user documentation included with the redistribution,
if any, must include the following acknowledgment:
"This product includes software developed by the
Stichting Wireless Leiden (http://www.wirelessleiden.nl)."
Alternately, this acknowledgment may appear in the software itself,
if and wherever such third-party acknowledgments normally appear.
- The BSD copyright. This copyright is most preferred due to its “no strings attached” nature and general attractiveness to commercial enterprises. Far from discouraging such commercial use, the FreeBSD Project actively encourages such participation by commercial interests who might eventually be inclined to invest something of their own into FreeBSD.
2.5 Money, Hardware or Internet Access
We are always very happy to accept donations to further the cause of the Wireless Leiden Project and, in a volunteer effort like ours, a little can go a long way! Donations of hardware are also very important to expanding our list of supported peripherals since we generally lack the funds to buy such items ourselves.
Page loosely based on perfect reference guide of http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/contributing
