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How Are You Helping the Software Community?

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Even before the World Wide Web, I downloaded everything I could find to run on my computer. I was a software Geek from day one. Hardware is expensive, so I never got into it nearly as much.

I got an email here from Josh, and he writes: “I’ve been a subscriber to your YouTube channel for awhile, and I thought I would put together a top 10 list for you about easy ways people can contribute to the software community”. So without further ado, let’s take a look at his tips.

  1. Join an idea submission site to share the ideas on how to make a product better with the community, as well as the company sponsoring the site. Examples of this include Dell’s Ideastorm Ubuntu Linux’s Brainstorm site.
  2. Download and test Alpha and Beta software. Companies that release this kind of software to the public almost always provide a way to report bugs as well as provide feedback. One easy and highly useful piece of software to test is a Web browser. Firefox and Chrome are two examples that offer easy to obtain public betas.
  3. Join a public bug tracker for a piece of software you use. This way, you can report bugs you find, as well as help identify valid and invalid already existing bugs by voting. You can also confirm bugs that have already been reported in the bug tracker.
  4. If you use OpenDNS, they have a community where you can submit domains for review, and vote on whether a domain is categorized correctly to help improve their content filtering. There are also a few places to report phishing scams, such as Phishtank.
  5. Contribute support in forums and help sites. If you know the answer to a question someone is asking at one of these sites, you can post an answer. An example of such a forum is Lockergnome Help forums, Apple Discussions and even Microsoft Newsgroups.
  6. Open Source projects often accept help writing documentation, or translating their documentation into a different language. Open Source projects also often accept donations. These donations can often be counted when you are doing your taxes. Some Open Source projects accept artwork, too.
  7. Try to contribute what you are good at. Software companies need a lot of different skills, such as artwork, legal advising, financial management, translations, user interface testing, etc… There is a place where anyone can contribute.
  8. Publicize software you use or like in your blog, Twitter, or even on YouTube.
  9. Join a user group for a piece of software you use. I’ve never been in one, however I know a few people in these type of groups, including one person who is in a VMware user group. He is able to get large discounts on VMware’s product,s as well as give direct feedback to VMware engineers.
  10. Use a lot of different software on multiple OS’s if possible.

So you see, there are many ways you can get your foot into the door where software is concerned, and make your voice heard. By helping out in any or all of these words will not only help you, but could help countless other people as well.

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