How You Can Help the GNU Project

Table of contents

• Guide to the GNU Project
• How to Help the GNU Project

Guide to helping the GNU Project

The GNU Volunteer Coordinators <gvc@gnu.org> can assist you if you wish to help the GNU Project. They will be able to put you in touch with other people interested in or working on similar projects. When you have selected a task from our task lists, please let them know you're interested in working on it.

Please let the GNU Volunteer Coordinators <gvc@gnu.org> know if you take on any task from this list. We want to keep track of what tasks our volunteers are working on.

For general questions about the GNU project, mail gnu@gnu.org and for questions and suggestions about this web site, mail webmasters@gnu.org.

How to Help the GNU Project

This list is ordered roughly with the more urgent items near the top. Please note that many things on this list link to larger, expanded lists.

• Expert C programmers needed for technical writing, editing and proofreading. GNU Press needs help updating existing books and creating new ones. If you are interested, please send email with a short description of your technical background and skill sets. Also mention if you have any editing or writing documentation experience. Send mail to <press@gnu.org>.

• We are looking for some help in announcing what's going on around the world in free software for education, in writing or translating documents or howtos. We would even be happy if someone would take over managing of the whole GNU education activity.

• Help coordinate translation of our web pages into various languages. Write to web-trans@gnu.org if you want to help.

• Volunteer to extend the Free Software Directory. This task entails downloading free software packages, digging up information about these packages, and checking and verifying the licenses of the programs. You can read details of how to help the project.

  If you are interested in volunteering for this task, please contact <bug-directory@gnu.org>.

• Write, evaluate, and use free software.
  • Install and use free software. The easiest way to do that currently is to install and use a GNU/Linux system.

  • Evaluate free software.
    • You can become a GNU Software Evaluation Group member.

  • Write Free software.
    • The GNU Help Wanted list documents GNU tasks that need volunteers.
    • The Savannah Help Wanted page contains additional help wanted postings for GNU projects that are hosted on savannah.gnu.org.
    • The Help Wanted page lists released GNU Projects not hosted on savannah.gnu.org that are actively seeking more help.
    • The GNU Projects page lists new GNU Software under development that are actively seeking more help.
    When writing software, please follow the GNU Coding Standards and read Information For Maintainers of GNU Software as you maintain the software.

    We are often offered software which already does substantially the same task as an existing GNU package. Although of course we appreciate all offers, we'd like to encourage programmers to spend their time making free software do additional jobs. So, before starting a new program, please check the Free Software Directory for free software that does the job already.

    If you need some resources to develop GNU Software, check the GNU Software Developer Resources web page.

• Write documentation for GNU software, using these resources, tips, and hints.

• Translate the GNU Web site into other languages. More information about the issue can be found at the Guide to Translating the www.gnu.org Web Pages. Write to web-trans@gnu.org if you want to help.

• Volunteer as a proofreader by subscribing to the proofreaders mailinglist (you do this by sending a message with the word "subscribe" in the body to <proofreaders-request@gnu.org>

• Tell others about the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation by:
  • informing your friends about the GNU philosophy and software.

  • informing your friends that the "Linux" operating system is really GNU/Linux: that is, the GNU system, plus Linux, the kernel. Simply making a consistent and unfailing distinction between GNU/Linux (the whole system) and Linux (the kernel) when you write or speak about the system will help us greatly, while taking very little time once you have unlearned the old habit.

  • by both
    adding a link to GNU's home page to your home pages,
    and suggesting that others do likewise.

  • by both
    mirroring this web site as these sites are already doing,
    and asking others to do so.

• When you are talking with people that don't value freedom and community, you can show them the many practical advantages of free software (see Why Open Source / Free Software? Look at the Numbers! for some useful evidence)

• Help the FSF raise funds to help us write more free software and documentation by:
  • making a donation to the FSF.

  • becoming an Associate Member of the FSF.

  • choosing the FSF as a beneficiary in your Affero page linking to your FSF Affero page in your email signature, software project, and writings.

  • ordering manuals, t-shirts and especially CD-ROMs from the FSF. Most of the FSF's funds come from selling copies of things that everyone is free to copy.

  • Convincing your office to order manuals, t-shirts, and especially CD-ROMs from the FSF.

  • Convincing your office to order a Deluxe Distribution from the FSF.

  • by selling free software and donating a part of the proceeds to the Free Software Foundation or some other free software development project. By funding development, you can advance the world of free software.

    Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development. Don't waste it!

• Volunteer to make sure that essays from our philosophy page and other GNU URLs are on and/or linked from WWW directory, portal, and various hierarchical web index sites, such as Yahoo!, dmoz.org, and Google. Get these sites to add detailed entries about our different web pages. Make sure that essays from our philosophy page and other GNU URLs are linked to often in the appropriate categories.

  If you'd like to help us with this task, please contact the GNU Volunteer Coordinators <gvc@gnu.org>.

• Donate hardware to the FSF.

• Take on one of the jobs (14k characters) we need done for this web server.

• If you or your company work supporting or developing free software in some way, you can list yourself (or your company) in the GNU Service Directory.

• If you run a company that needs to hire people to work with free software, you can advertise on our Free Software Job Page.

• We are looking for someone to contact companies interested in hiring free software developers, and looking for job postings to put on our Free Software Job Page. If you would be interested in this, please contact <gnu@gnu.org>.

• Donate used computers to other free software organizations.

Return to GNU's home page.

Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. There are also other ways to contact the FSF.

Please send comments on these web pages to webmasters@gnu.org, send other questions to gnu@gnu.org.

Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Last updated: $Date: 2004/04/16 12:43:47 $ $Author: opus $