help

help

[josh parson]

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Hi, I'm Josh. I'm relatively new to open source development and wanted to
work on something I was passionate about (EMACs), I was wondering if there
were any small fixes/features that needed work.

Thank you,
Josh

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Re: help

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Hi, I'm Josh. I'm relatively new to open source development and wanted to
  > work on something I was passionate about (EMACs),

Thank you for being interested in contributing to GNU Emacs.
The main developers can suggest something to try implementing.

I should explain that we don't use the term "open source" to describe
what we are doing.  We call it "free software" -- free as in freedom.
A free program respects users' freedom; a nonfree program denies users
freedom.  See fsf.org/tedx for an introduction to the idea of the free
software movement, followed by
https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html

"Open source" is a business-friendly offshoot of the free software
movement.  It dismissses the issue of computing freedom as a concern
and focuses on practical benefits such as technical progress.

If you contribute well to GNU Emacs, we won't ask you about your
philosophical views.  We'll simply appreciate your help.  But it's
important for you to know what this is all about.  Don't be surprised
if we have policies that diverge from what you're used to, because our
goals also diverge from what our society is used to.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: help

[Jim Porter]

On 1/12/2023 6:43 PM, josh parson wrote:
> Hi, I'm Josh. I'm relatively new to open source development and wanted 
> to work on something I was passionate about (EMACs), I was wondering if 
> there were any small fixes/features that needed work.

The way I got started was simply by finding some things in Emacs that I 
wanted to do, but which didn't work right for me. I think it helps to 
start small like this: if you use Emacs regularly, there are probably at 
least a couple of times you've run into a situation like that. This has 
the benefit that you're starting off by writing patches that you have a 
personal stake in (because the patch will let you do something you want 
to do), which can help keep you motivated as you run into roadblocks 
learning a new codebase.

If you haven't found any issues like this, then the next thing I'd 
suggest would be to look on the Emacs bug tracker 
<https://debbugs.gnu.org/> for any open bugs related to features you use 
a lot. Just put "emacs" in for the package name under "General search", 
plus whatever other search terms you think make sense.