How Can I Help
How Can I Help?
While it is not absolutely necessary to contribute in order to benefit from Open Source applications, it is the only way to maximise your return. A strong and healthy community is self-supporting and delivers new functionality in a faster and more robust manner. Protect your investment in Open Source applications by participating at the highest level you can.
Use the Applications
Open Source applications are only successful with strong user communities that contribute to discussions, guide software development, and provide quality assurance. The more you use these applications, the better they become.
Spread the Word
If you are experiencing efficiencies or advantages throught the use of Open Source Geospatial applications, don't be shy about it. Let others know how you have been able to leverage our applications to improve your business processes, to advance the state of science, or to provide services in under-resourced areas. Again, one of the largest
Contribute Code
If you have a need for something in an Open Source project, it is likely that others need the same thing. Contribute your changes back to the project, and benefit from community enhancements and quality assurance. Better yet, collaborate with others on feature design and implementation, sharing development costs and developing a better solution.
Fund Development
The beauty of Open Source is that if there is a feature that you need, and don't have the resources to develop it yourself, there are many developers who would be more than happy to undertake the development for you. You get the benefits of having your required functionality in the application, as well as further improvements and additional features that others in the community contribute towards.
Write Documentation
One of the worst-kept secrets of the application development industry is that developers do not write good documentation. Part of the reason for this is that their code is totally transparent to them. The best documentation is written by users who are building solutions based on these applications. This is a great way for non-developers to contribute to Open Source applications.
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