A year ago on this day, I wrote a blog post about the demise of NDoc and issued a challenge for users of Open Source Software to contribute to their favorite projects.

So I offer the following challenge. First, ask yourself these two questions:
  1. How much money do I save because of Open Source Software?
  2. Considering how many people spend three bucks for a useless ring tone, is a single dollar too much to contribute to a useful Open Source project?

So let’s ban together and declare today, July 26, 2006, Contribute To Open Source Day.

In looking back at my original challenge, I now believe the emphasis I placed on monetary contribution to be slightly misguided. While I agree to that monetary contributions are helpful for infrastructure support costs (hosting websites, build servers etc…), there are many other means of contributing that are even more valuable, if you have the time. Money is just the easiest way to contribute.

Consider the following options…

  1. Contribute a bug fix
  2. Help verify bug reports
  3. Submit a unit test to help provide code coverage
  4. Test
  5. Write documentation
  6. Submit feature requests
  7. Help answer questions in the forums
  8. Tell the developers how much you appreciate the product
  9. …

I think #8 is often lost in the shuffle. I’m quick to submit a bug report, but I forget to tell the developers of a fine product such as WinMerge how much I appreciate the product.

There are many projects that could use your help. For example, Andrew Stopford just announced a request for developers willing to help MbUnit out. What a great opportunity to work on some really cool code.

Subtext is always looking for contributors, especially now that my commit frequency is down due to my wonderful newborn son. We could use new blood to help pick up the slack until my son cuts his teeth (once he has them) on C# and ASP.NET (or perhaps IronRuby by then).

So again, please consider contributing to Open Source today in whatever way, shape, or form you see fit. This is not a plea to guilt you into it. Rather, consider this a friendly reminder for those of you who would do so anyways, but forget to due to busyness, like myself.