Participate

There are several areas where you could help out. Many require no programming skills.

Here are a few suggestions:

Artists
Of all the contributions made by the talented people who make OpenBrainstem so great, none is more visible to others than those made by the Graphic Artists. If you have an eye for art (whether or not you think you're good) we want you to participate. Artists of all ages, backgrounds and experience levels are welcome.

If your art is used in one of our projects or on one of our websites, we always make sure that you receive proper credit, including the listing of whatever contact information you would like us to provide so that users of our software and visitors to our websites can find you.

Documenters
There's an old saying in software development: "Documentation doesn't write itself."

This Wiki
Jump right in to making open source even better by picking a wiki page that needs work and fixing it up. Or perhaps find one that does not yet exist and create it's first content. Start with a single page and see how you like it.

To participate in the wiki, you need to first create an account, then ask Peregrine for write access.

The Need for Documenters
Writing documentation is something all too often left to the last minute, especially in (most) software development environments. It has always amazed me to see how many managers, programmers and others involved in producing software acknowledge the need for proper documentation but still do not do it! Every project I have worked on in the past where documentation came before code, we always got the code done much faster and with fewer bugs. The process of coding is much easier because everyone knows exactly what the end result is to be.

Documentation and Engineering
At OpenBrainstem, we always document & design before coding. However, not all talented coders are good writers. The OpenBrainstem Documentation Team takes "raw" documentation for a program and produces clean, easily understood user and administrator documentation that end-users and admins alike can use.

Translators
It is quite rare to meet computer programmers who speak more than one or two languages. So how do all those programs have such excellent Internationalization (a.k.a. i18n) support? Hard working Translators.

OpenBrainstem software is developed with internationalization in mind. To that end, we use tools and programming techniques that make it extremely easy to include support for multiple languages and add additional language support in the future. These tools also make it very easy for a translator to actually write their translations.

If you know another language and would be willing to translate some of our program interfaces or other text found in our projects, then drop us a line by sending email to [mailto:translation@openbrainstem.net translation@openbrainstem.net] or by subscribing to the Translators mailing list (not yet online). In the future, larger scale projects may get their own per-project translator mailing list(s).

Testers
Alpha & beta testing are very important phases in the development of any software project..

If you would like to use one of our applications, feel free to download the software and use it. Everything on OpenBrainstem is open source. However, if you have some time that you could spend testing new features and/or new versions of your favorite OpenBrainstem software, we would love to hear from you.

The mailing list server is not yet up. Once it is, all testers should join the general OpenBrainstem-Test list and the per-project test list for each project you wish to be involved in. All Coders also receive their projects' testers list.

Programmers, Developers and Software Engineers
There are some additional resources for those who code. Visit the Coder's Information page to learn more about OpenBrainstem's standards, practices and procedures.

Remember, at OpenBrainstem we strive to produce the highest quality code we can. All Programmers, Developers and Software Engineers are expected to participate in the process of properly designing and implementing software.

We know and understand that only a very few programmers get the opportunity to learn good programming techniques during their careers. Even fewer learn many of these useful things in a formal education setting (like a college Computer Science program). Never fear, we still want you to work with us. Even if your code contributions need reworking to fit into the design and goals of the project you are working on, we will take the time to help you understand what we are doing and why.