<story><title>Ask HN: How can I get involved with Linux/OpenSSL/GnuPG/etc</title><text>What would it take to be involved in $bigScaryOpenSourceProject? I&amp;#x27;m passionate about cryptography, security, and privacy so projects like Linux, Firefox, OpenSSL, etc... might be perfect for me to get more involved with. Outside learning C or possibly Rust (for Firefox development in future) I have no idea how I&amp;#x27;d start with any of these projects, partly as my day job is all web based so it&amp;#x27;s what I&amp;#x27;ve been focused on for years.&lt;p&gt;Are there valuable contributions I can make outside writing code? For example, SSL can be tricky to setup but tools like SSL Test and the Mozilla Server Side TLS wiki page are invaluable in making us all safer. What&amp;#x27;s something in security that&amp;#x27;s too difficult or time consuming that I could work to automate or make easier?</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rekado</author><text>Subscribe to the mailing lists of one of these projects and try to build the project from source.  Check the bug trackers for things that are not very interesting but need fixing anyway.  Then prepare a patch and try to upstream it (the method depends on the project).&lt;p&gt;As you work on the little things you will slowly gain a better understanding of how the code base is organised and how you could contribute more significant changes.&lt;p&gt;Valuable contributions outside of writing code differ across projects, but most lack current or understandable documentation.  As you learn about the project and read whatever documentation might already be there you will certainly find things that can be clarified.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: How can I get involved with Linux/OpenSSL/GnuPG/etc</title><text>What would it take to be involved in $bigScaryOpenSourceProject? I&amp;#x27;m passionate about cryptography, security, and privacy so projects like Linux, Firefox, OpenSSL, etc... might be perfect for me to get more involved with. Outside learning C or possibly Rust (for Firefox development in future) I have no idea how I&amp;#x27;d start with any of these projects, partly as my day job is all web based so it&amp;#x27;s what I&amp;#x27;ve been focused on for years.&lt;p&gt;Are there valuable contributions I can make outside writing code? For example, SSL can be tricky to setup but tools like SSL Test and the Mozilla Server Side TLS wiki page are invaluable in making us all safer. What&amp;#x27;s something in security that&amp;#x27;s too difficult or time consuming that I could work to automate or make easier?</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>noahl</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve contributed to open source software, and done a little maintenance work too. The number one thing I recommend is that you email the project mailing list &lt;i&gt;before&lt;/i&gt; you start work. Tell them that you&amp;#x27;re new, but you want to help. People are usually happy to help newcomers find an appropriate project and answer questions along the way.&lt;p&gt;What I&amp;#x27;ve seen going wrong in the past is where people decide that they want to contribute to a project and don&amp;#x27;t tell anyone else about it until they&amp;#x27;ve written hundreds or thousands of lines of code that are never going to be accepted, because the maintainers don&amp;#x27;t like their overall design (or the maintainers don&amp;#x27;t agree with the direction of the patch, or something else that could have been caught early but is way too late now).&lt;p&gt;Communicate early, communicate often. And if a community doesn&amp;#x27;t like that, leave and find a different one. Your time is more valuable than that.&lt;p&gt;P.S. and be sure you&amp;#x27;re contributing to a project that you are passionate about, not just one that sounds cool. Having your own intrinsic motivation will make a huge difference.</text></comment>