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Ask HN: Lesser-known open source projects that need contributors?
I am a python developer and I am looking to contribute to some lesser known open source projects in python.
Do you know of any such projects ?
Thanks
- jordigh 12y agoThe thing is, if it's lesser known, why would you want to contribute to it? Your contribution would probably just languish in obscurity. That being said, I have one project that I really would like to see thrive: sh (and perhaps give it a different name) http://amoffat.github.io/sh/ http://amoffat.github.io/sh/ I really hope this some day becomes the standard Python interface to the system shell. I also work with Mercurial and Octave. Mercurial is a very lively and smart community. We always need more contributors, and hg is of course less popular than git: http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/ContributingChanges http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/ContributingChanges Drop by #mercurial in Freenode if hg seems like your thing.
- freehunter 12y agoGetting practice working with existing projects or contributing to open source is a good reason to seek out projects to contribute to, and finding lesser-known projects takes a bit of the stress out of trying to learn by contributing to high-profile projects.
- jordigh 12y ago> finding lesser-known projects takes a bit of the stress out of trying to learn by contributing to high-profile projects. Can you please explain this? I don't understand. Is the fear that, say, if I contribute to Linux and Linus absolutely hates my patch, he will make a huge mockery of me and the mockery might even end up on the front page of HN? Or are high-profile projects just in general very unwelcoming? I mean, Mozilla appears to be very friendly: http://whatcanidoformozilla.org http://whatcanidoformozilla.org Is it not actually friendly? I honestly don't understand, because I just send my patches wherever I can send them, regardless of their social status. I have never experienced this kind of stress.
- pm215 12y agoI think that high-profile projects have a necessary tendency to default to a fairly high bar for contribution quality and a more heavyweight process for how much testing/review/rework needs to be done to get the patch in. This flows from the fact that they have a lot of users (so regressions are bad and UI changes or new features need more thought/consensus) and often a high rate of patch submission (so maintainers can be short on time to help bring less-than-perfect contributions up to standard). Within that there are of course more and less friendly projects.
- chrismorgan 12y agoAs a counterpoint, larger projects will have new contributors coming along more frequently, so they may be more ready and able to help the inexperienced contributor. That’s my observation in the Rust community, for example.
- iurisilvio 12y agoIn a less known project, it is really easy to find an issue where I can be useful. They have lots of created issues and nobody working on them. If I understand the issue, I can just dive into the code and make a patch. In a large project, in some cases it is even dificult to know where to start. Mozilla definitely did a good job to mitigate this problem.
- endersshadow 12y agoYou're also forgetting the biggest thing, I think, standing in the way: Intimidation. Perhaps in their minds, they aren't expert developers, and are just learning, and therefore, their contributions to a very large project like Firefox or Linux would be unwelcome--as they probably are a little too scared to start. A self-confidence issue, as it were. Through the lens of the internet, it certainly feels sometimes like everybody knows everything--you often forget that you're getting thousands of viewpoints rather than just one super programmer doing everything. I can definitely see how this would be intimidating for newer developers. Cutting your teeth on obscure open source projects is a way to build up your self-confidence, work with others, and see your contributions make a tangible benefit.
- joeclark77 12y agoI'm also a newbie like the OP, and I would say that from the outside, those high-profile projects are pretty intimidating. I would also assume that most of the "low hanging fruit" has already been picked. What am I going to be able to contribute that somebody else hasn't already done better? But maybe this is all in my head...?
- makmanalp 12y agoI do really like sh! What do you need done?
- jordigh 12y agoHere is a really baffling bug that I can't figure out, and I've tried very hard: https://github.com/amoffat/sh/issues/141 https://github.com/amoffat/sh/issues/141 EDIT: whoops, wtf.zip 404s, give me a moment to fix that url. EDIT2: Crap. I have completely lost the test case. Oh well, if I manage to reproduce it, I'll reopen that bug.
- rch 12y agoI really like how 'sh' is put together - it's become standard for me. Thanks for building such a useful tool.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y ago> The thing is, if it's lesser known, why would you want to contribute to it? Sometimes it's fun to be a big fish in a small pond.
- techload 12y agoOwnCloud?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- tomswartz07 12y agoownCloud is a great project. We use it in our organization across all client machines. That being said: I've found it very difficult to contribute to the project. I've had multiple pull requests languish for months. Currently, there are 10 open pull requests that have not been touched by the devs in months (some are from January and earlier). However: don't let that stop you from trying to contribute! :)
- j_s 12y agoCan you share any details on how ownCloud is used within your organization?
- tomswartz07 12y agoSurely. I work at a school district in central Pennsylvania. All of our staff (teachers, secretaries, custodial, etc) use ownCloud as a backup and recovery solution. We chose ownCloud because it allows us to keep confidential records on our own servers, something that Sugarsync, Dropbox, etc did not allow us to do.
- j_s 12y agoThanks! I was wondering if it supported aggregating the extra/unused storage of all the client desktops, but it sounds like you are using it for the server stuff.
- jqm 12y agoownCloud could use a little (preferably non php) competition in my book. Besides, the OP states he is looking for Python projects.
- roschdal 12y agohttp://github.com/freeciv/freeciv-web/ http://github.com/freeciv/freeciv-web/
- SelfishDuck 12y agoCheck out Pydio whose sync client has been fully rewritten in Python https://github.com/pydio https://github.com/pydio
- pp19dd 12y agoFor the mc geeks, two node.js projects: nmp and mineflayer. (1) NMP: node minecraft protocol (2) mineflayer: minecraft bot API The first project is what mineflayer uses to communicate with minecraft servers, and it's usually behind when a minecraft release comes out. The second project is a bot API that uses it, with some interesting plugins (such as navigate, that uses the A* algorithm). Some of the things that are missing from that project are higher functioning routines, such as inventory management, a flexible work queue, a command control panel.
- michaelmior 12y agoI don't believe Strider[1] is very well known. At least, I don't see discussion of it often despite over 1k stars on GitHub It's a continuous integration/deployment server written in JS, but with support for building projects in many different languages. One of the cool things is that it's very easy to deploy on Heroku so you can have your own private CI server up and running in a few minutes. That said, there's tons of room for improvement, especially on the side of language support, so more contributors would be awesome :) [1] https://github.com/Strider-CD/strider https://github.com/Strider-CD/strider
- anilgulecha 12y agoHave a mac? I'm looking for help porting Trelby to it. I can guide/assist with anything in the code. You'll need to figure out the mac specific parts. http://trelby.org http://trelby.org Contact me offline via email if you're interested.
- kazinator 12y agoI don't have a Mac, yet I maintain an OS X port of the TXR language. I use a VirtualBox image running 10.7.3 (Lion); host OS is Windows 7, currently. Initially, an interested user was doing the port by himself. To do it right and maintain it going forward, I grabbed a VM and took over. Every time I make a release, I build seven binary images (all Intel): Windows (via MinGW and Cygwin), Ubuntu, Debian, Solaris, FreeBSD, and OS X 7.1.3. The regression tests have to pass on all of them. Only the Win and Deb are rolled using real machines; the rest are VM's.
- madisonmay 12y agoThe Theano project could use some love: https://github.com/Theano/Theano https://github.com/Theano/Theano
- dalek2point3 12y agoopenstreetmap, a global project, could really do with some more developers. for example, we still need a reporting framework that displays a dashboard of stats. many other projects can be found here: https://github.com/osmlab https://github.com/osmlab
- rohitv 12y agoCould you elaborate on the reporting framework? Couldn't find any details on it...
- bjelkeman-again 12y agoA good open-source set of tools to assemble good dashboards and reporting would be useful in many areas, including the work I am involved in. We are looking at building some of this ourselves at the moment.
- sciurus 12y agoLooking through Debian's Work-Needing and Prospective Packages pages for projects written in Python might give you some ideas. https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/ The list is composed of packages that need Debian maintainers for whatever reason. I realize you're looking to contribute to developing software rather than packaging it, but there may be a correlation between projects that need packagers and those that need developers.
- apapli 12y agoOpencart? It's a very neat ecommerce solution but could still benefit from a lot more development. Eg proper eBay integration, improved reporting, responsive design...
- ayrx 12y agoOpencart is the last project anyone should contribute to. The developer has an absolutely horrible attitude. As an example, https://github.com/opencart/opencart/pull/1594 https://github.com/opencart/opencart/pull/1594
- tych0 12y agohttp://qtile.org http://qtile.org is written in python and always looking for contributors :)
- JoshTriplett 12y agolibffi is widely used by Python and many other languages, but it has very few contributors, and needs help.
- molsson 12y ago"Critic" is an open source web app for doing code reviews. It's written in Python and could use more contributors. Code: https://github.com/jensl/critic https://github.com/jensl/critic See it running: https://critic-review.org/dashboard https://critic-review.org/dashboard
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- glamp 12y agopython ggplot needs some help! https://github.com/yhat/ggplot https://github.com/yhat/ggplot https://github.com/yhat/ggplot/issues?state=open https://github.com/yhat/ggplot/issues?state=open
- oleavr 12y agoFrida is still looking for contributors: http://www.frida.re http://www.frida.re There's a lot of fun things to hack on. Drop by #frida on FreeNode to learn more.
- tomswartz07 12y agoFast Linux Deployment Toolkit (FLDT) is a project that was originally created by a high-school student and was adapted for use in our school district. We'd love to have support to help build it out. :) The main repo is here: https://github.com/pennmanor/FLDT https://github.com/pennmanor/FLDT However, my updated version is here: https://github.com/tomswartz07/FLDT https://github.com/tomswartz07/FLDT
- rglullis 12y agoAbout two years ago I got a contract to work on one project that needed to integrate a web service with a mobile app that was using Parse. I looked into the client libraries and the current one for Python was lacking. David Robinson[1] forked it and was trying to revive it somewhat[2]. I got to take a good look at the things I thought were missing and were needed to my project, and started submitting patches. David is super open to new contributors and no contribution is too small. "Real work" stops me nowadays to contribute some more, but I sure know how good it would be to have a couple of more people focused on completing feature-parity with the API. [1]: https://github.com/dgrtwo [2]: https://github.com/dgrtwo/ParsePy
- dirkc 12y agoI recommend trying to find something that you would want to use yourself to work on. I have a neglected project at work - The Mechanical MOOC (https://github.com/p2pu/mechanical-mooc/ https://github.com/p2pu/mechanical-mooc/) is a tool we use to run signups and mailing lists for large online courses.
- teabee89 12y agoNuPIC: https://github.com/numenta/nupic https://github.com/numenta/nupic. Numenta Platform for Intelligent Computing: a brain-inspired machine intelligence platform, and biologically accurate neural network based on cortical learning algorithms.
- svankie 12y agoThat's a neat project.
- declension 12y agoQuod Libet [1] is a mature but "lesser known" audio project written in Python and GTK+ (3). Whilst there are probably some quite high barriers to entry (the user community is very tech- and music-savvy, the project is fairly feature-complete, and the codebase quite complex), we're fairly welcoming and try to take care of our (large) backlog of tickets whilst welcoming useful contributions where possible, or at least discussing / explaining their considered rejection. In particular, we could really do with a dev (or in fact buildmasters / testers) who are Mac-based ideally with some knowledge of building and testing Python and GTK+ apps on OS X. Probably best to email the list for further details. [1] http://code.google.com/p/quodlibet/ http://code.google.com/p/quodlibet/
- kraymer 12y agobeets? the media library management system for obsessive-compulsive music geeks. New contributors are always welcome to tackle the growing list of issues/wishes <https://github.com/sampsyo/beets/issues?state=open> https://github.com/sampsyo/beets/issues?state=open> !
- briancurtin 12y agoPython itself. Check out the developer guide at https://docs.python.org/devguide/ https://docs.python.org/devguide/ and the mentorship list at https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/core-mentorship/ https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/core-mentorship/ to get started.
- atmb4u 12y agoThese python projects could help some love https://github.com/atmb4u/marlin/ https://github.com/atmb4u/marlin/ - Fast and easy ReST API server on redis http://atmb4u.github.io/butler/ http://atmb4u.github.io/butler/ - Python Dictionaries and Lists on Steroids
- olinbg 12y agoDidn't see issues for these, what did you have in mind?
- Pxtl 12y ago"Are there any lesser know open source projects that need contributors?" All of them.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 12y agoHaha. I've been writing scripts to grab paperless statements off of bank websites (and utilities, and so on). Want to help? http://www.reddit.com/r/paperless http://www.reddit.com/r/paperless Some of the nasty ones are challenging, but a typical website takes only an hour or two to write the script for. So it's not as if you have to make a big investment in time.
- mjhea0 12y agohttps://openhatch.org/ https://openhatch.org/