open source tithing

open source tithing

Stolen from John
How much time should one contribute toward the development of the open source software they use? The concept of tithing comes to mind. Just contribute 5 or 10 percent of the time that you use open source software (OSS).

Example: Suppose you use OSS every day, all day, to do your work. Now say you work 40 hours a week (stop laughing!). Maybe only half of that time is on the computer (whatever). So we’ve got 20 hours a week of usage. Just an hour or two a week meets your quota. While that doesn’t sound like much, there are a lot of users out there. Multiply!

Two hours a week proofreading or updating documentation, doing some performance tuning and sharing your findings, whatever. Remember, you don’t have to be a coder to help The Cause.