ExoContrib
Giving back to the world of free and open-source software ( FOSS)
This is a program that allows Exoweb people to spend 4 hours per week during working hours to contribute back to free and open source (FOSS) projects. There are many benefits to this (see below), and software developers and admin people are all encouraged to participate.
There is a Trac set up ( contrib.exoweb.net) with a Wiki. In it you can post ideas for how we can contribute back, and you can browse the list of available ideas. We'd like to see ideas for projects that will help the rest of the FOSS world, but it should definitely also be helpful to Exoweb; i.e., it's good if it solves problems we have as well.
A Google Group has been set up to handle discussions and requests.
Once you've selected something you want to do, draft a more detailed plan, run the plan through your manager, and start the FOSS work.
Some of the benefits are:
- It's the right thing to do; you get something, you give something
- You make FOSS stronger, something we all benefit from
- You save a lot merging/ patching work by contributing fixes back upstream (so new versions don't have to be patched)
- You get your code peer reviewed, perhaps finding better ways to do things
- You get better at collaborating with people around the world
- You build relationships that you can later rely on for technical help
- You get a sense of achievement by helping a lot of people
- You can learn new technologies and tools
- You can improve your English
- You get acknowledgement and sometimes even fame
Projects
- ExoDjango: A group django enhancement application collection.
- DjangoFlattext, store template segment in database.
- Snowball Stemmer wrapper for Python
- Fulltext analysis module w/ Django support (mostly for experimentation at this stage) - idea is to get something akin to Ferret for Python eventually
- Trac code review plugin
- ExoBlog - A multi-user blog system that is aimed to be very Wordpress-like
- PostgresqlMaterializedViews - Materialized Views (Also known as "Indexed Views") for Postgresql.
- python-eggs - a Python Egg package management system
- Chinese localization for Sunbird (ask Xie Lei to be your beta-user)
- EconomistPodcastingProxy - podcasting proxy server for "The Economist" audio edition
- geoutils
- PSB - An IRC bot
- Twisted Core Documentation in Simpilified Chinese (twisted-doc-zh)
- CS-IRCBot
- Find My iPhone command-line utility, or make this script as cgi-bin to allow people see where you are without installing any third-party software on your mobile phone.
A Google Code Search for Exoweb shows some of our contributions, at least.
License
- All code on ExoContrib is licensed under the BSD licence. You can find the licensing information here.
