How to get started with open source

A guide for beginners in open source

Open Voices, Issue 9
Opensource.com

Copyright
Copyright 2014 Red Hat, Inc. All written content licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionShareAlike 3.0 License.

Introduction
Taking the first steps in any journey can be scary. There are new obstacles to hurdle, unfamiliar
landscapes to traverse, and usually the destination is shrouded in mystery. But that's also what makes
new ventures exciting and worthwhile.
The collection of stories in this eBook are about striking out on the open source way. Whether you're an
individual, seeking information on moving away from closed software, or an organization looking for
free and open alternatives to the utilities that help your business succeed, these are stories about finding
your footing in the world of open source. Several are origin stories about how experts discovered
open source, and how they've flourished in the time since. Others are focused guides on finding the
right software, using a specific open source tool, or introducing your neighborhood or town to the
power of the open source way.
Remember that it's not easy to get started with anything new, but, as an old Buddhist saying goes, It is
better to travel well than to arrive. We hope these stories will help you travel well along the open
source way, and keep you traveling for years to come.

Open source as an alternative for small businesses

By Aseem Sharma (originally published February 2014)
Is it safe to use? What alternatives do I have? Is it easy to install?
These were some of the questions asked by Amandeep, a New Delhi based owner of a small scale
clothing company, when I pitched to him a few open source solutions that could make his day-to-day
operations more efficient. For someone without any IT background (but a sharp business sense), these
were brilliant and relevant questions. The answers to these questions won't just help Amandeep, but if
shared broadly may help reduce the apprehension of a significant number of small scale business
owners, especially in India. My interactions have shown that a lot of these businesses are looking to
grow, enhance their productivity, and most importantly, save costs.
Approximately 7,500 miles away from Amandeep in New Delhi lives Nabeel Hussain. Nabeel, a
graduate of Conrad Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology Centre, is a new product development
and digital marketing specialist actively engaged in Waterloo, one of the top entrepreneurial ecosystems
in the world. As an entrepreneur, he is always faced with the challenge of managing limited resources
while building traction. He has a plethora of technology solutions at his disposal, and the technical
know-how to utilize these solutions. Additionally, he has a robust support system to advise and guide
him to the best available solution that fits his needs. For Nabeel, open source solutions provide an
inexpensive alternative for crafting early stage prototypes for his ideas and validating them with
customers. From using WordPress and its library of plugins, to venturing into OpenShift Origin and
Joomla, he has the knowledge to make use of top notch technology to reduce risk, manager resources,
and build traction for his venture.
These two different scenarios indicate a categorical gap in the knowledge of entrepreneurs when it
comes to adopting open source solutions. Although there is some geographic gap between the
entrepreneurs in the developed and the developing world, as well as a gap that spawns from business
exposure/experience, the problem is wider than that. There is a difference in productivity and efficiency
between entrepreneurs who utilize open source solutions and those who do not. The situation becomes
clear when we look at those small scale business owners who are technology pros versus those who are
not.
A significant number of businesses, in India in particular and in the developing world in general, are of
a mom-and-pop business nature. Based on my recent interactions with these small scale business
owners, I see widespread misconceptions pertaining to open source software. The questions that
Amandeep from New Delhi asked me are critical in nature. In order for small scale businesses to adopt
open source solutions, it is vital to address these misconceptions.

Is open source software really safe?

The question arises from the basic process that is followed to write code using open source way. If any
hacker can read your code, then why can't they use the knowledge to their personal benefit? Most of
those sorts of malicious attempts fail because there are a lot of committed people looking over the
source code, finding problems, and fixing them. More eyes tame bugs quickly. And security by
obscurity is no security at all. What strikes me at this point of time are the words of security expert

Bruce Schneier, "Public security is always more secure than proprietary securityFor us, open source
isn't just a business model; it's smart engineering practice."
Developing code in an open source fashion is an expression of a technique. Software, in our world,
should be treated as a service which can be customized based on the specific needs of a user, rather
than merely as a product.
I know a lot of people involved at different levels of open source projects. All of them are driven by
their commitment to reach technical and professional excellence, and to add to the existing body of
technology knowledge. The entire ecosystem of open source is built on that commitment. The Linux
operating system, for example, with its proven track record of stability and security, forms the
backbone of complex infrastructures and data centers world over. The same benefits that help Linux
and other open source tools succeed at the enterprise level can be reaped by small businesses, too.
A couple of months back, I read Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat. An otherwise helpful and
insightful book, the author seems to host a thought process that open source is contrary to the
developers' right to make a profit. A lot of people who think that way do not see the forest for the trees.
They see free software, they see Linux, but they miss the multi-billion dollar ecosystem that surrounds
open source. Its true that Brian Behlendorf, the person who orchestrated Apache web server, did not
make a dime off it, but the immense value that this server has added to the economy and the legions of
small to medium size businesses that use this infrastructure is an important contribution. Free software
developed by a community is not tantamount to insecurity.

Are there quality alternatives available?

Gone are the days when open source was produced only by the engineers, for the engineers. From word
processing to calendar applications to servers and to setting up telephone communication networks,
small businesses can benefit hugely from open source solutions. Let us take the example of word
processing, an activity that almost all small businesses, irrespective of their field, carry out.
Microsoft Word is the premium software in the area but it is cluttered with features that a lot of small
businesses won't ever use. The bloating of Microsoft Word has cost its simplicity. There are easy to use,
simple, free, and open source word processors available out their. A few of these that I have been using
(and suggesting to small businesses) as an alternative to Microsoft Word are:
1. Apache Open Office: This software primarily consists of six tools for managing office tasks,
namely: Writer as a word processor, Calc as a spreadsheet tool, Impress for multimedia
presentations, Draw for diagrams and 3D applications, Base as a database tool, and Math for
creating mathematical equations.
2. AbiWord: Developed in 1998 with the help of gtkmm, this open source word processor includes
both simple word processing features to sophisticated features like multiple views, page columns,
and grammar checking.
3. LibreOffice: This is my favorite and always at the top of my recommendation list for anyone
looking for a free and efficient word processing suite. Although the features are similar to those
of ApacheOpen Office, LibreOffice is better when it comes to community support.
There are dozens of other excellent alternative solutions to proprietary software and thousands of open
source projects that can serve small businesses. It can sometimes be difficult to select the software
which best matches specific needs, but there are plenty of people globally willing to help you make
those decisions and help take small businesses down the path to an open and productive future.

How to contribute to OpenStack

By Rich Bowen (originally published February 2014)
Like any open source community, OpenStack has its local quirks when it comes to getting involved in
the project. This is further complicated, in the case of OpenStack, by the fact that it's actually a
collection of numerous smaller projects which are linked together via shared APIs, but which have
independent objectives and developer communities.
This article isn't comprehensive, by any means, but it's an attempt to show you some of the places
where you can plug into the community. It's especially important to note that you don't have to be a
programmer to be a valuable contributor to OpenStack.

Mailing lists
Since it spans timezones, continents, and languages, most of the communication around OpenStack
happens on mailing lists.
There are a LOT of mailing lists, but there's one main one: [email protected]. You can
subscribe or look at the archives. Rather than splitting technical discussion by sub-project, it's all in one
place, with subject line tags where appropriate. For example, a discussion of Ceilometer would be
indicated by [ceilometer] in the email subject line. The disadvantage of this approach is, of course, the
high volume of the listaround 100 messages per day. The advantage, however, is that you don't have
to subscribe to a dozen other lists to get a comprehensive picture of what's going on and risk missing
out on some sub-project you were unaware of.
There are also lists for cloud operators, for foundation governance, security, and various other subteams. View the complete list.
Once you've decided what list(s) you want to be on, you should listen quietly for a while to get an idea
of the tone of the conversation and who the main speakers are. Read the mailing list etiquette guide for
tips on local cultural conventions.

Git and Gerrit

If you want to submit changes to the code or documentation, you'll need to be familiar with the Git
workflow. Although the code repositories reside on GitHub, the patch process doesn't follow the Github
pull request model you may already be familiar with. Instead, it uses Gerrit, which ensures that every
change to any part of the OpenStack codebase is subjected to the same rigorous testing process,
whether it's a major functional change or a tiny documentation tweak. View the fully documented
workflow.
Every change is submitted to a system that requires at least two human reviews of the change as well as
a successful completion of the testing suite. Once these requirements have been met, the code is
automatically merged into the Git repo and becomes part of the master branch.
It is something of a pain to go through this setup process, but once you've done it once, you'll never

need to do it again, and the advantages are enormous.

ask.openstack.org
While discussions about the direction of the project happen on the mailing lists, Q&A conversations
happen on http://ask.openstack.org/ in a Stack Overflow style forum. This is the place to go if you have
questions about OpenStack, or if you wish to help answer others' questions.
Participants in the forum earn 'karma' points that give them access to greater levels of privilege and
responsibility, such as moderating questions, editing questions and responses, and adding tags to
conversations. The more you do, the more you can do.

IRC
If you prefer real-time conversation, there are a number of OpenStack-related channels on the Freenode
IRC network. They are all fairly quiet, since ask.openstack.org carries the main weight of conversation,
but there's generally a large crowd (837 on the #openstackchannel as I'm writing this) and someone will
usually answer a question pretty quickly.
The #openstackchannel is for general discussion and Q&A. The#openstack-101 channel is for beginner
questions that you might feel embarrassed asking elsewhere.
#openstack-community is a channel where people conduct meetings to discuss a wide variety of
OpenStack-related topics. A meeting bot takes notes so that they can be reported back to various parts
of the community. #openstack-community is a good place to find out about local OpenStack user
groups in your area and discuss various community events.

Events
Speaking of events, there's always something going on somewhere related to OpenStack.
There are two main conferences every year, one in the United States and one elsewhere, where the next
six months of OpenStack development is discussed and technical presentations are given on the various
aspects of the project.
The next one of these is the OpenStack Summit which will take place in Atlanta, Georgia from May
12-16, 2014. Get more details and register to attend on the website. Then, the next Summit will be held
in November 2014 in Paris, France. Many sessions are recorded. You can watch presentations from
OpenStack Summit Hong Kong, last year.
In addition to these major events, smaller local events are always happening and listed on the site.
OpenStack meetups can be two people meeting to chat to hundreds of attendees gathering for formal
presentations. Regional user groups are listed and if there isn't one in your area, consider starting one
up. All you need is another person who wants to meet to talk OpenStack.

Do something
In the end, if you want to get involved in OpenStack, or any open source project, the trick is to just do
something. If you wait around for someone to tell you what to work on, you'll be waiting a long time.
Step up and answer a question, fix a typo, patch a bug, or go to an event.
See you in the community!
Get started in open source online and offline
By Robin Muilwijk (originally published February 2014)
What skills do you need and which projects should you participate in as beginner in open source?
These are common questions for beginners to open source software, hardware, communities, and
methodologies. New folks to open source can start their discovery online and offline. Events and
projects of many different kinds will help beginners find what they are good at and allow them to get to
know their own skills.

Get started with open source online

Codecademy
Codecademy is a website where you can learn several programming languages in an interactive way.
Languages such as HTML, PHP, Ruby and Python are a few. With each language, you learn the basics,
like syntax and commands, and by finishing assignments, you earn points and badges.
I can recommend Codecademy, as I signed up myself to follow the PHP lessons. The first lessons start
real easy, and this course continues to teach you the most common commands and programming
structure and syntax. Each lesson ends with practicing what you just learned. All you need for courses
at Codecademy is your browserno extra software is required.

Code School
Codeschool takes a different approach for learning; students take what they call "paths" to Ruby,
Javascript, HTML/CSS and iOS. Where Codecademy provides its courses in online reading material,
Codeschool presents them through video lessons and challenges.
Each "path" contains several lessons that take you through a specific programming language. Again, no
extra setup is required, just the site and your browser. What makes Codeschool interesting is that they
also provide a course in programming apps for the iPhone and iPad.

Code.org
Code.org is known for its Hour of Code program and offers similar courses such as Javascript and
Python but also tutorials for beginners. These beginner tutorials let you solve puzzles in a Scratch-like
environment based on the Angry Birds game, teaching you concepts like repeat-loops, conditionals, and
basic algorithms.

Code.org clearly states the age category to which the courses apply, and the requirements to follow
them, which in most cases is a browser or an iOS or Android device.

Scratch
For the youngest beginners (age 8+) in open source, there is the popular programming language
Scratch.
Scratch is a programming language and an online community where children can program
and share interactive media such as stories, games, and animation with people from all
over the world. As children create with Scratch, they learn to think creatively, work
collaboratively, and reason systematically.
Scratch has a very user and kid-friendly interface. It teaches kids the very basics of programming.
Scratch provides information for educators and parents, making it easy to adapt in classrooms or at
home.

Get started with open source offline

Local User Groups
If you already have an interest for a specific open source programming language, or platform like
Linux, local user groups are a great way to get introduced. These groups typically meet weekly to
monthly. A great benefit of this offline approach is the ability to ask questions, share knowledge, and
find guidance in what you are learning.
A great example of this are the Linux User Groups (LUGs) and PHP User Groups. Other well known
open source projects have user groups as well, like Drupal and MySQL.

Hackerspaces and makerspaces

A hackerspace, also known as hacklab or makerspace, is a community led workspace. Its a place
where people meet with a common interest, for example regarding computers, technology, or science.
Hackerspaces can be a great way of discovering the use and development of open source and open
hardware. Different from a local user group, a hackerspace can be about more than one topic or
interest. This provides a beginner in open source with the opportunity to explore several open source
software or hardware projects, and thus, to find out where his or her interest lies.
Hackerspaces are easy to find, just search the Internet and you will most likely find one close to home
that you can visit. Some hackerspaces run a website with a list of projects. This is a good way to search
for something that you are interested in. To give you an idea, this is the project list for a hackerspace in
Amsterdam (Netherlands).

Coderdojos
Exploring Coderdojos was inspired by two of my previously published interviews with Lune van Ewijk
(Digital Girl 2013) and Julie Cullen (Ambassador for Ireland during Europe Code Week 2013).
CoderDojo: The open source, volunteer led, global movement of free coding clubs for
young people.
CoderDojo is a non-profit global movement and was founded in 2011 by James Whelton and Bill Liao.
Because CoderDojos are open source by nature, every Dojo is different and autonomous. Young people
between the ages of 7 and 17 meet at Dojos to learn how to program apps, games, software, and more.
In the true spirit of the open source way, CoderDojos are set up, run, and taught at by volunteers.
Note: Read more about how CoderDojos are about more than just coding in my interview with Lune
van Ewijk. You'll find they can also be about robotics, playing with open source hardware like Arduino
or Raspberry Pi boards, and learning the skill of soldering.

Online versus offline

Where the online options give you lots of opportunities to learn the beginnings in open source
programming languages, its the offline opportunities that really introduce beginners to all the open
source projects that are out there.
Young beginners especially off to a great start if they try Scratch or visit a local CoderDojo or
hackerspace.
Youth recommendations:
Age 6-8 and up: Code.org beginner tutorials, Scratch, Coderdojos
Middle school: Javascript and Python, hackerspace, user groups
High school: Apps for iOS, hackerspace, user groups

Building an open source community

By Mihai Guiman (originally published February 2014)
I have told the story of how FinTP, the first open source application for processing financial
transactions, was born. Here, I would like to present a deeper view on how the community is being
built, its structure and governance and why I think people should join such communities. I myself am a
founding member of two communities, the first being built together with my friends after our first
bachelor party, from a desire to preserve our spirit of joy and good vibes. The second one is the open
source community around FinTP, called FINkers United.
An open source project cannot succeed without a powerful community that supports its development.
At the same time, Eric Raymond said in The Cathedral and the Bazaar that a necessary pre-condition
for success in an open source project is having something runnable and testable to play with. Therefore
we have the chicken and egg dilemma of which comes firstthe product or the community.
Fortunately, FinTP had both, being the result of evolution from its previous commercial version to open
source and having a company, partners network and a user base that would become the starting point
for the open community FINkers United.
While it may seem that the transition from the closed community to FINkers United is destined to be
smooth, there are many adjustments to be made. The roles in the community have to change drastically,
from the former way of interaction between supply and demand sides, in order to benefit from all the
advantages an open environment has to offerreduced time-to-market, better results delivered from a
strong collaboration, cost savings. Of course, a coherent governance strategy has to be established so
the project doesnt go off rails.

Community structure
Communities are groups of individuals sharing common interests. FINkers United is not different, all
members having the same goal to improve the processing of financial transactions based on open
source applications, pushing the interoperability level in order to achieve a new semantic
standardization for financial transactions. For this specific community and mission, several
professional profiles of individuals and institutions are welcomed: technical (developers, IT architects
and designers, implementers, support, quality assurance), business (business knowledge in banking
practice, standards, financial transaction processing, banking or corporate treasury, corporate to bank
business etc.), communication, marketing, market analysts, auditing and legal consultants.
In order to successfully establish the strategy and objectives, to manage and control the activity of the
community, the community we conceived has the following three governing entities: General
Assembly, Board of Directors and Censor. In the early stages of the community, the governance is
ensured by the founding company, since it is the sole contributor. For now, the community has a
Technical Committee coordinated by the companys CTO, which includes 10 project leaders. In time,
new hierarchies will emerge based on merit and contributions, so any member can be elected.

Reasons to join the FINkers United community

The most common question is whats in it for me, why should I join this community?

The rewards are very different from the traditional closed-source projects, where there is a clear limit.
For suppliers, the types of reward-earning contributions are in the job description, for which you get a
monthly paycheck. For the demand side, what you pay is what you get, with limited flexibility from
both providers and budget owners.
In open source communities, the benefits are different for every member profile, but the essence is that
everybody is involved because of having a shared interest and acts as an entrepreneurhaving ideas,
initiatives and the freedom to act accordingly to own beliefs.
For the adopters, the benefits of using and supporting open source software have been debated in
length, and they include:
1. The power to influence projects and strategies
2. Freedom from vendor locking
3. Benefit from better, more secure and reliable products
4. Better TCO and time to market
5. Reduce development and maintenance cost
6. Attract and retain development talent
7. Community based, price affordable, service consistent, guaranteed quality 'escrow agent'
For contributors, the satisfactions are mostly triggered by a sense of accomplishment.
1. Materialcustom professional services can be offered to adopters who lack certain skills or need
SLAs
2. Intellectualtheres great opportunity to develop the professional profile by taking on the technical
challenges open source projects have to offer
3. Recognitionopen source communities reward each of their members based on the value of their
contributions
4. Competitivethe opportunity to work for state of the art technological projects, with high impact
on several industries
Speaking for myself, my motivation for joining FINkers United is that being a part of the team that
attempts to revolutionize the financial transactions processing arena is a great challenge and
experience, not to mention that succeeding would be truly an accomplishment. Moreover, I believe that
creativity is original thinking based on openly sharing knowledge and transparently sharing results.
Why would you join an open source community?

5 ways open source is transforming tech in 2014

By Eren Niazi (originally published February 2014)
For the last decade weve watched an epic contest unfold between open source and proprietary
technology, and 2014 is the year that this dynamic will radically transform. The lines between open
source and proprietary are becoming irrevocably blurred as proprietary firms pour resources into open
source development and open source companies dial in their revenue models. Above all else, the open
source community is producing the technologies businesses need to be competitive in the data-rich 21st
century.
The open source movement, built on the marketplace of ideas and the scalability of collaboration, is
swallowing the proprietary world. To understand where the entire tech world is going, I believe we
need to keep a close eye on these five open source trends:

1. Data storage clustering

In 2014, open source technology will allow datacenters to cluster together storage systems and thereby
grow at a rapid pace. The software will allow us to clone an entire storage system, making it possible to
bring new database servers online within minutes. Essentially, open source will crack the problem of
absorbing high volumes of data at high speed.
This ability to build up storage space quickly is crucial because our digital universe is expanding
rapidly. In a 2011, the International Data Corporation (IDC) found that the global volume of digital
data is roughly doubling every 2 years, and by 2020 our digital universe will hold 40 trillion gigabytes.
The amount of information managed by enterprise datacenters would grow 50-fold, according to the
report. Open source clustering will make this expansion efficient and affordable.

2. Proprietary software companies go open source

Proprietary software providers feel immense pressure to support open source technology. Although
Oracle has been known to bash open source, the company has at least 14 active open source initiatives
and has become a corporate sponsor of the OpenStack Foundation, with plans to integrate OpenStack
capabilities into its products and cloud services. In September 2013, IBM announced that it would
invest $1 billion into Linux and open source innovation to help its customer run big data and cloud
computing solutions on IBMs Power Systems servers. Just this January, Microsoft open sourced its
Azure cloud server design through Facebooks Open Compute Project. The other tech giants are
following suit.
Open source will make even further inroads in the public sector this year. The U.S. government has
built OpenSource.gov, a back-end site dedicated to helping departments migrate to open source
technology. The Pentagons Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) alone is funding
and contributing to over 70 open source projects related to data infrastructure, visualization, and
analytics. The NSA even open sourced Apache Accumulo, its own NoSQL database. Thanks to
organizations like the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation, U.S. elections may soon utilize digital
voting on open source platforms, just like Estonia and now Norway. Mass open source adoption in
government will place additional pressure on proprietary software companies to evolve.

3. High performance computing

Open source will produce the next generation of high performance computing clusters that underlie big
data analysis and applications. The high speeds of such computing clusters provide the ability to parse
gargantuan volumes of data in milliseconds. Enterprises in every single industry now need such
capabilities to make use of the data they collect. Clustering can also help enterprise websites support
wide fluctuations in visitors and usage without faltering in performance. We created this clustering
technology way back in 2004 before data analytics became crucial to business strategies. Today, it will
be the key to pinning down valuable data at a reasonable cost.

4. Mobile development
With the relative decline of desktops and rise of mobile devices, open source is becoming the
foundation for superior mobile development. Existing platforms like Joomla, Convertigo, Dream
Factory, OpenMEAP, and many others allow developers to build their product, get it to market quickly
and scale. Open source programming languages, databases, middleware engines and other tools will
continue to fuel mobile development and the growth of a mobile open source ecosystem.

5. Universities teaching open source

Universities have long been users and producers of open source technology, and students are getting in
on the action. As VentureBeat reported back in November, twenty-two universities including Stanford,
MIT, Berkley, and Carnegie Mellon have all teamed up with Facebook to provide students with
academic credit for working on open source projects. Universities are adapting their curriculums and
welcoming such opportunities to make sure that students graduate with in-demand skills and the best
employment prospects. Beyond the Facebook inspired projects, every major tech university has faculty
members working on open source projects (often with their students). As high schools, junior highs and
middle schools pick up the slack in Americas computing education, I have no doubt open source will
find its way into their curricula too.
The open source versus proprietary contest is ending because a critical mass of technologists in
business and government recognize that open source technology offers higher performance, scalability,
and reliability at a much lower price than proprietary solutions. Open sources leadership in data
storage clustering, high performance computing, analytics and mobile development will secure open
source dominance over the next decade. The open source shift among proprietary software providers
and the rise of open source in tech education will also reprogram the international tech workforce to
study, master and implement open source solutions across every major industry. My hope is that we
remember 2014 as the year we began to view open source as the norm rather than the exception in
technological innovation.

How to get started in civic hacking

By Andrew Hyder (originally published February 2014)
What is civic hacking?
Seventy people gathered together one sunny Oakland afternoon to volunteer and improve their city.
There were no rakes or yard tools normally seen at volunteer-day events though. No paint brushes, no
trash bags, no canned soup bins. These seventy people were laden with laptops and were volunteering
to improve the citys website.
This group of engaged citizens were building Oakland Answers, a new easy way to get answers for the
most common questions asked on the Oakland City website. From finding out how to pay parking
tickets, to checking what jobs the City is hiring for, the new website is citizen-focused and community
built.
The day long event was called a "writeathon" and the majority of the folks in the room were not web
developers but long time Oakland residents who came to write answers. Technologists were there too
though, setting up servers and forking the open source code for the site. These web developers, answer
writers, and City staff were all taking part in the growing new movement of civic hacking.
Civic hacking is people working together quickly and creatively to help improve
government.Jake Levitas
Here are a few more examples of popular open source civic hacking projects:
OneBusAway (on GitHub)
City budget visualizations (on GitHub)
311 Service Tracker (on GitHub)
Flu Shot Finder (on GitHub)
StreetMix (on GitHub)
CityVoice (on GitHub)

Open source civic hacking

Open source software is fundamental to civic hacking. Passionate volunteers write code and invent
services that improve their own neighborhoods, but do so in a way that can be repeated in other
communities around the world. Being able to easily share code without restriction is what allows for
civic technology to scale.
For example, a few years ago in Boston there were severe snow storms that buried the fire hydrants.
The same snow was downing powerlines and sparking fires. Some civic hackers saw this problem and
created Adopt-a-hydrant (on GitHub), a way for neighbors to volunteer to shovel out the hydrants on
their block. The following summer, the same code was forked and redeployed in Honolulu, not for
snow but for tsunami sirens. Adopta has since been redeployed dozens of times and is being constantly
improved by coders across the country.

Getting started
A great first project is to include your city in an existing service. Take Click that 'hood (on GitHub) for
example. Its a fun game that helps teach about a citys neighborhoods. What's great about it is that it
has clear instructions for adding your own city to the game. These instructions include using open
source tools, collaborating on GitHub, and finding open dataall necessary skills for getting started in
civic hacking.

Finding open data

The civic hacking movement is dependent on being able to easily find data about governments and the
places they govern. If transit data, like bus schedules and train station locations, arent available than
we couldnt make any useful apps about transit. Luckily, many cities understand the importance of
making their data available and have open data portals now. Data.gov has a list of many of the
government data portals around the country and world. These portals gather all the available datasets
that a city has and puts them all online in one place. The best data portals have that data in a machine
readable format, so that it can be easily included in apps. Check your citys website to find if a data
portal exists. If not, then working with your city to get one setup is a great civic hacking project to start
with.
Open source data portals:
CKAN
DKAN
Socrata

Community
Its important to remember that civic hacking includes both community and technology. All aspiring
civic hackers need to join with others to solve our civic problems together. Check out the Code for
America Brigade to find a local volunteer group or start your own. The best part of joining up with
other civic hackers is finding out how theyve achieved successes in their own cities. The Brigade is
one of the best resources for discovering the latest open source tools and projects to work on. Also,
working with city staff and civic leaders who are part of the Brigade is vital so that the civic technology
apps created by civic hackers solve real societal problems. Many different skills and many different
perspectives are needed to work on problems that effect many different people. Finally, to get really
immersed in the civic hacking movement, consider applying for the Code for America Fellowship
program.
Happy hacking!

Who helps your Linux distribution run smoothly?

Thank a packager today
By Luis Ibanez (originally published February 2014)
The people behind the scenes who work tirelessly to make your Linux distribution run smoothly are the
packagers. The vast majority of Linux packagers are volunteers who dedicate their evenings and
weekends to create and maintain the gears of the Linux distributions they love.
The Linux ecosystem is thriving with many different distributions. They satisfy different audiences,
needs, and styles. They range from types that are:
secure and suitable for military and financial applications (RHEL)
bleeding edge and dynamic (Fedora)
universal (Debian)
educational (Edubuntu)
for the hobbyist (Raspbian)
for the media artist (Ubuntu Studio)
for the easy-going user (Mint)
for the desktop application and cloud (Ubuntu)
simple and lightweight (Arch)
faithfully built from source code (Gentoo)
reliable and unpretentious (Slackware)
And, the list keeps going for tens of other distributions that are continuously evolving.
In all the cases, the Linux distributions are aggregating free and open source packages, configuring
them and combining them in a manner that ensure their proper collective behavior. Thanks to all that
configuration and testing, adopters of Linux distributions have the peace of mind of simply installing a
package (a given application) and having the confidence that it will work nicely with the other
packages currently installed in the system.
The "magic elves" behind the scenes who work tirelessly to make this work smoothly are the
packagers. The vast majority of Linux packagers are volunteers who dedicate their evenings and
weekends to create and maintain the gears of the Linux distributions they love.
Back in February 2012, I had the luck of being the first trainee of the Debian Maintainer of the Month
(MoM) program, started by Andreas Tille. The goal of the MoM program is to educate and train new
packagers for the Debian distribution by pairing trainees with mentors and doing the training while
packaging a new real application. The program has all the ingredients for balancing an interesting,
challenging, and rewarding task.
During my training, we learned how to package fis-gtm, the open source implementation ofM/MUMPS
that is of great importance for the ecosystem of open source Electronic Health Records systems. The
fis-gtm package has just been accepted in the Debian unstabledistribution.
Going through the training was eye opening. I learned a great deal of very useful tools and practices,
that since then I continue to use daily. From the proper use of GPG keys, to chroot containment and

remote screen sharing with tmux. The collaboration environment was well described by Andreas Tille
as: "Waking up in the morning to realize that someone in another continent has already solved for you
the problem that had you stuck last night."
In ideal circumstances, a Linux packager works closely with the developers of the upstream package in
such a way that new releases of the package can be adapted quickly to be included in the next release of
that Linux distribution. In many cases, the process of packaging uncovers issues with the package that
require the upstream developers to make changes and adjustments. A packager also works in close
coordination with other packagers in the same Linux distribution because many packages have
dependencies on other packages or provide services for other packages, making it vital that the
community of packagers coordinate their updates to ensure the consistency of the final Linux
distribution.
As Linux users, it is often easy to forget (disregard?) how much work goes into the creation and
maintenance of a Linux distribution.
Becoming a Linux packager is an excellent way to learn about software development, quality control,
project management, and software maintenance in an environment of passionate individuals who
deeply care about the output of their work. This is an experience all young developers should have.
After having learned the ropes of Linux packaging, and having seen first hand the dedication of this
community, I developed a great deal of respect and appreciation for their work. Now, every time I
install a package, whether it is from the command line with
sudo apt-get install package

or
yum install package

or any of the equivalent graphical interfaces, I pause and think:

"Thank you to the person who spent many hours configuring and building this application so that I
didnt have to."

With greater permissions, comes greater

responsibility
By Heiko Rupp (originally published February 2014)
I came to work with open source after an experience in college. We used a system called Usenet, a
world wide distributed discussion forum. At the university, there wasn't an email client I liked, so I
wrote one and just gave it (including the source code) to whoever wanted it. This experience introduced
me to a community of people who made things and shared them; it also introduced me to a job at my
alma mater as a Usenet administrator.
In that position, I was an administrator for one of the (at that time) top 10 Usenet servers in the world.
It was running open source software: InterNetNews (INN). Running this server taught me how to
support bug reports and send patches to the maintainer. Then, I took over maintaining the FAQ
document and did that for some years.
Later, I began working for a company running JBoss Application Server 3. We created some of the
required artifacts using XDoclet. We had some pain points with both, so I wrote patches and
enhancments for both. After some time, I got access to the source repository and I was then able to
directly check on the fruits of my labor and I became more in tune with the inner workings of the
project. Working with XDoclet, I incorporated the patches others submitted, answered questions, and
submitted bug reports. Eventually, I got the rights to do releases, which felt very special.
The thing about open source is that a lot of it starts with having a pain point, like using software that
was given to you to use that you don't like. If you are lucky and that software is open source, you can
have a look at the source code. And, if the "pain point" is big enough, you can debug it and create a
patch. Or, if you have some questions about an aspect of that software, those questions may get
answered by someone on the development team, or you might figure it out for yourself. Then, when the
next person comes along and asks that question, you know the answer and can help the project as a
whole by answering it.

Answering questions and submitting patches

When you're getting started with open source projects, answering questions and submitting patches will
earn you credibility within the project, and at some point it's like that the folks in the "inner circle" will
ask you if you want to have the rights to directly commit your patches or to edit documentation pages.
With greater permissions, comes greater responsibility... and greater possibilities to make an impact on
the project.
If you can't code, remember that there are so many ways to get involved in an open source project
beyond coding. Like, fixing typos in the documentation or translating it. Many projects also have a
bugtracker. Use it to view an old bug report, then try it with the latest version of the software and report
the result back in the tracker so that the development team can better judge when and how to fix it.
Here I shared 10 ways to get involved in an open source project without writing any code.
When you contribute, don't be disappointed if folks are too busy to look directly look at your

contribution. This isn't personal! Try to make it easy for them to consume your work by applying a
small patch that explains what is broken and what can be done to fix it. Just saying "does not work"
without further data, gets everyone nowhere. Similarly, if you create a change in the source code, make
sure it applies nicely and does not break any tests. Strive to be a team player and it will earn you
credibility which will result in faster feedback and greater accessibility to the open source project.

May open source be with you

By Cory Hilliard (originally published February 2014)
My introduction to open source software began when I was sitting on a server room floor, with my
head in my hands, completely frustrated with a Windows 2000 server. Every night there were some
services that would crash. Every morning I would get yelled at by my over-bearing boss. I was new to
the company, it was my first IT job fresh out of Network Admin college, where I graduated at the top of
my class, but I couldn't fix this problem because it was a "known Microsoft issue," and I just had to
wait for the update.
I had known about Linux and was following its progress while attending college. I kept reading about
its rock-solid operation, so I wanted to test it out in our company (risking my own neck and bacon).
Somehow, I convinced my boss that with the purchase of a $200 used computer I could solve all his
problems. My plan was to replace one of the services that was causing problems just to see if Linux
could handle the job. I searched the Internet and found a lot of information about Red Hat and how
brilliant their services were, but there was no way I would be able to convince my boss to buy a Red
Hat server subscription. Heck, I don't even think he paid for his Microsoft licenses!
Eventually, I found CentOS. I used an online walk-through for setting up a Dynamic Host
Configuration Protocol (DHCP) server on Linux, booted it up, and disabled the MS DHCP service. I
was overjoyed to find that the DHCP service ran perfectly. It even gave me more power and control
over what was going on. I was truly ecstatic.
After a couple weeks of flawless operation, I suggested we move another problem service over. Fast
forward about eight months, and I had moved all services over to Linux and my job became so easy. I
had no prior experience with Linux and didn't know what to do if it crashed, but I made thorough notes
and could rebuild whatever it was in a matter of minutes. It never crashed. Never needed rebooting.
Life was good.
Years after this experience, my Windows XP laptop was taking 30 minutes to boot every morning,
includering jittery operation and frustration after frustration on my end. So, I made the switch to Linux.
I was sold on Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora because of their community, contributions to open source, and
the philosophy that the Fedora distribution has. Fedora believes in building a community distribution
that promotes and fosters open source values and beliefs while remaining free for everyone. They are
dedicated to freedom and innovation, and they contribute everything back to the free and open source
world.
So, I selected Fedora as my full-time personal distro. And, I am now using Fedora with the Cinnamon
GUI, because Gnome 3 feels a bit like a tablet interface to me. That's another beautiful thing about
Linux, you have the freedom to choose the option that best suits your needs.

Open source Jedi training

Through all these experiences, I found that what I've loved is learning about open source. I love the
freedom I feel when installing software on any machine. No limitations. And, it operated cleaner, was
easier to personalize, and was free as in freedom. Yes, I'll admit it, I fell in love with open source. I

found that in all my command line hacking, editing scripts, and trying to read code that I couldn't yet
read, I wanted more. I wanted to learn how to write open source software. I wanted to contribute to the
greater good. I felt like I needed to become an evangelist of open source software and standards. It felt
right. It felt pure. I was "on a mission from Gad." I promote Linux to anyone who will listen. I have
successfully converted about 20 families to using Linux full time and offer them free support when
they need it.
Currently, I am halfway finished with my three year Computer Engineering Technology/Computer
Science course at Algonquin College in Ottawa Ontario Canada. It is a great school, and all IT students
learn about Linux as part of the course curriculum. Some instructors promote Linux and open source
software in their classrooms, while others demand their students run Windows and use proprietary
software. I have been trying to promote and encourage the use of Linux and other open source software
like LibreOffice for our classes and assignments; I personally try to use only open source software even
at the expense of losing marks.
At this point in my open source journey, I have so many ideas for open source projects, and once I
complete my training I want to contribute to other ongoing projects like Gnome and Cinnamon GUIs,
Adobe Brackets, and Fedora. I feel like a kid in a candy store that is waiting for his allowance so I can
spend it all!
I am treating my education as if it is open source Jedi training. I can't wait for my first epic battle to
begin. May open source be with you.

Consuming open source software: How to use and

buy it
By The Outercurve Foundation (originally published February 2014)
Vendors and original equipment manufacturers (OEM)and their IT customers, governments, and
academicsare all using, buying, and making open source software, and often all three activities at
once. This is a good way to think about ones relationship with open source software projects. There are
three activities one typically engages in with respect to the open source software project: make, use,
buy.
Sometimes one is performing all three activities with respect to a single project, e.g. buying Red Hat
Advanced Server for primary deployment in IT, while also using the Centos distribution for
development and testing, and contributing (making) a few bug fixes back to the Centos project. At
other times one has a different relationship with each project in the enterprise portfolio, e.g. buying
JBoss support for the application server, while using Fedora Linux (from Red Hat), and using and
contributing back to the Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE) project in development.
Using and buying liberally-licensed open source software is relatively straightforward. One is simply
consuming the software. One buys a product that is based on open source licensed software in the same
way that one buys other software. One evaluates the vendors offering against ones own IT
requirements and managed procurement risk profiles. Another way to say this is that you dont procure
Red Hat Linux server software differently than you historically bought Solaris or might buy Microsoft
Windows Server systems.
Using an open source-licensed software project (as opposed to buying a product based on it) adds
additional considerations that should factor in the strength of its community and the costs of supporting
that choice either through the development of in-house expertise or external specialists. One develops
in-house expertise by participating in the open source projects community.
One reviews a projects documentation and tutorials, forum and email list activity, and IRC channels.
One also should consider the availability of contracting support from around the community. These
considerations are the same whether the open source software under consideration is tools and systems
or developer libraries and frameworks. The investigations and trade-offs are no different whether one is
an individual with an amount of time to invest to solve the problem or an IT department wanting to use
open source software on a large scale.
Once one starts to make open source software, i.e. to produce it, there are different considerations.
These are the two scenarios for producing open source:
Contributing to an existing project, adding value through bug fixes and new functionality (and nonsoftware contributions like documentation and translations).
Starting a new open source project, which means organizing the infrastructure, developing the initial
software, and providing for the early community.
The motivation for contributing to an open source project is simple. People generally start using open
source software before they become contributors. They use it because it solves a problem. Once they
use the software for a while they will encounter a bug, have a change they want to make, or possibly

document a new use case. Contributions can be given back if the user is comfortable making the
software changes and the project community has done a good job of making it easy to contribute.
It sounds easy enough to simply make the necessary change and ignore the contribution back to the
community, but living on a personal forked copy of the software comes at a cost. There are two main
problems: other enhancements and bug fixes arent seen and shared except by installing newer versions
of the 'official' software, and the forked software will need to be re-integrated if upgrading. This can
amount to significant work.
It is far better to contribute ones changes back to the project community if feasible, working with the
project maintainers to ensure it is contributed correctly and patched into the main development tree.
The onus is on the community to make it easy to contribute and on the on the contributor to do so
correctly. The cost of living on a fork gets worse over time as the forked branch drifts further away
from the projects developmental course. Its well worth the investment to embrace the efficiencies of
the development model and contribute back.
The steps from using to contributing and participating in an existing project are small. A company that
chooses to use an open source software project to solve its problems rather than purchasing a product
has already invested in learning the project enough such that contribution is an easy step with automatic
cost savings over living on a fork. The contribution step is easyeven if one is paying for support.
However, creating ones own open source software project requires more care and investment, and we
explore that in the blog post: Making Open Source Software: the considerations around a project's
success.
Originally posted in a series on the OuterCurve Foundation blog. Reposted using Creative Commons.

What's the best Linux desktop environment for me?

By Meine (originally published February 2014)
When you install a Linux distribution, a set of programs comes along with it. It's easy to add and delete
elements of the programs that don't fit with your needs, but what about altering the look and feel of the
distribution to suit you? The key is to add a second desktop environment or window manager.
This is an example of how Linux is all about freedom of the user, by the user.
The ability to change and alter the desktop environment is just as important as being able to change and
alter the underlying technical components. A few years ago Linus Torvalds complained about the
GNOME 3 desktop and reportedly switched to a different one. The Unity environment for Ubuntu
caused a similar reaction by users. On the other side of the proprietary divide, Microsoft Windows 8
created turmoil among users with their tiled new look. Users wanted their Start menu back and to be
able to get things done as they had before.
Running Linux, changing or adding a different desktop environment is as easy as installing any other
program. Just install the software, log out, and log in back again on the new environment. Keep in mind
that most desktop environments come bundled with specific text editors and terminal programsyou
can decide what you to keep and what to dump. And, choosing a different window manager just
changes the way you interact with your Linux box, it doesn't cause you to lose new programs.

Which desktop environment is the best?

First, look at the hardware of your computer. The desktop environment can be beautiful but eat up a lot
of your resources. My top four recommendations based on a balance of beauty and resources are:
1. GNOME3
2. KDE
3. Cinnamon
4. Unity
On less powerful systems, a 10-year-old desktop or netbook for example, a more straightforward
desktop environment that will do a good job without pushing the cooling fan all the time is a better fit,
like: MATE, XFCE, LXDE, OpenBox, or Enlightenment.
Most Linux distributions offer a default desktop environment that fits best with its overall concept. I
see it an orchestra of instruments all playing nicely together. Heavy environments also provide very
complete software by default. Desktops like XFCE and LXDE come with lighter programs, but still
will not let you down on productivity. Of course, you can add complete suites like LibreOffice to a
light desktop; that way you have a fast starting computer and file manager, but also real power for
writing, calculating, and creating presentations.

Why Linux?
Desktop environments for Linux also helps reduce costs and environmental footprints for individuals,
small groups, and large businesses, because you can use the hardware you already own instead of

buying new and still update to the latest and greatest. The German city of Munich recently switched to
Linux an officially promotes its use to reduce e-waste in the community. Also, support for Linux distros
is typically good with regular updates for at least a year or two, while others keep up support for longer
periods, like the LTS versions.
If changing to a new operating system sounds daunting, simply create a backup of your files before
switching. Additionally, all of the well-established Linux distributions come with excellent instructions
that guide you through the installation.

Tips for installing

There are over 300 Linux distros to choose from, just take a look at most popular ones! If you are
unfamiliar with Linux, one of the top 10 distros is a good starting point, although Mint and Ubuntu will
be a lot easier for a novice user than Arch. Mint also includes the necessary software to run videos and
music. With Fedora this is more difficult because this distro only includes non-proprietary drivers.
After a while you'll get used to Linux and you could try something different, like installing a different
desktop environment or another distro. But, first stick to the basics as provided until you know more
and feel comfortable using the system.
You can try Linux using a LiveCD of the distro of your choice. Download the .iso file and install it on a
4GB USB flash drive. UNetbootin is a program that allows you to create bootable live USB drives
without burning a CD, and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Just try the Live version for a
while before you install it on your computer. If it is not to your liking, just make a bootable Live USB
with another distro. If you already use a virtual machine, you can try it from there.
Finally, Linuxers are friendly people and are able to offer help when you get stuck. The DistroWatch
pages offer links to the distro specific user forums. Remember, you are not the first one trying, so a lot
of questions and answers are already given.

How to teach hacking in school and open up

education
By Pete Herzog (originally published February 2014)
Whatever you may have heard about hackers, the truth is they do something really, really well:
discover. Hackers are motivated, resourceful, and creative. They get deeply into how things work, to
the point that they know how to take control of them and change them into something else. This lets
them re-think even big ideas because they can really dig to the bottom of how things function.
Furthermore, they aren't afraid to make the same mistake twice just out of a kind of scientific curiosity,
to see if that mistake always has the same results. That's why hackers don't see failure as a mistake or a
waste of time because every failure means something and something new to be learned. And these are
all traits any society needs in order to make progress. Which is why we need to get it into schools.
Now, there is the expected resistance from school administrations and parents. Mostly because people
don't know what hacking really is. Many people who have been called hackers, especially by the
media, or who have gotten in trouble for "hacking" were not, in fact, hackers. Most all of them were
just thieves and fraudsters. When you read in the news, Teen girl hacks Facebook to harass a
classmate, what you're seeing is a sensationalized headline. What a hacker reads in that headline is:
Mean girl watched classmate type in her Facebook password and then logged in as her. That mean
people and criminals do bad things with communications medium is not a reason to fear the medium.
Schools are there to educate and can embrace this distinction for real change.
Hacking is a type of methodology. It's a way to do research. Have you ever tried something again and
again in different ways to get it to do what you wanted? Have you ever opened up a machine or a
device to see how it works, read up on what the components are, and then make adjustments to see
what now worked differently? That's hacking. You are hacking whenever you deeply examine how
something really works in order to manipulate it, often creatively, into doing what you want.
A hacker is a type of hands-on, experimenting scientist, although perhaps sometimes the term "mad
scientist" fits better, because unlike professional scientists they dive right in, following a feeling rather
than a formal hypothesis. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Many interesting things have been
designed or invented by people who didn't follow standard conventions of what was known or believed
to be true at the time.
For example...
The mathematician, Georg Cantor, proposed new ideas about infinity and set theory that caused
outrage amongst many fellow mathematicians to the point that one called his ideas a "grave disease"
infecting mathematics.
Nikola Tesla is another person considered a "mad scientist" in his day, but he knew more about how
electricity behaved than anyone else. He designed possibly the first brushless motor that ran on AC
electricity but is mostly known for the Tesla effect and the Tesla coil.
Then there was Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis who figured out that doctors need to wash their hands
between treating patients to keep diseases from spreading. He wondered if the diseases following him
around between patients were his fault, so he decided to try washing hands between his patient visits
and sure enough the transmissions disappeared. His ideas went against both the scientific conventions

of what was known at the time about germs (nothing) as well as the convenience of the doctors who
felt it was too much hassle to keep washing their hands.
It just so happens that the way the Internet is designed and the huge number of different applications,
systems, devices, and processes it has makes it the most common place to find hackers. You could say
it's a place where information can run free because it was built open and free by hackers so it's the best
playground for hackers. But it's not the only place. You can find great hackers in almost every field and
industry and they all have one thing in common: they spend time learning how things work so they can
make them work in a new way. These hackers didn't look at something as the original designers did, but
instead saw bigger or better potential for it and hacked it to be something new.
What you may think you know about hackers is that they can break into other computers and take over
other people's accounts. They can read your email without you knowing. They can look through your
web cam without your permission and can see you and hear you in the supposed privacy of your own
home. That's not untrue.
Some hackers see network security as just another challenge, so they tinker with ways to trick or fool
the system, but really what they're trying to do is out-think the network installers or designers. They
discover as much about the network as they can, where it gets its instructions, the rules it uses, and how
it interacts with operating systems, the other systems around it, the users who have access to it and the
administrators who manage it. Then they use that to try different ways of getting what they want. This
kind of hacking can be greatly beneficial to the world for understanding how to be safer and for
building even better technology.
Unfortunately though, sometimes the hacking is done by criminals and what they want is illegal,
invasive, and destructive. And those are usually the only hackers you read about in the news. A hacker
is not someone who posts to someone's account when they leave a social media page open or shouldersurfs passwords and then logs into their account later. That's not hacking. A hacker also is not someone
who downloads a script kiddie tool to break into someones email. Those aren't hackers; those are just
thieves and vandals.
Hacking itself is not illegal. At least not any more than throwing a rock is illegal. It all comes down to
intent. If you throw a rock and your intent is to injure someone, that's a crime. If your intent is not to
hurt someone, but someone does get hurt, that may not be a crime, but you are responsible for your
actions and will have to pay restitution. An Institute for Security and Open Methodologies (ISECOM)
project called the Hacker Profiling Project found that the most damage from hacking comes from
young, inexperienced hackers damaging other people's property by accident. Which is something
parents and teachers already teach kids when it comes to rock-throwing, but it doesn't translate well
when it comes to how to behave in cyberspace. If we are teaching hacking, then we can also teach
responsibility, accountability, and make it clear how to behave when hacking around other people's
property. This will encourage students to stick to hacking the things they bought and own.
The caveat to that is that there are cases where it may be illegal to hack something you bought and
own. There are hackers who have been punished for hacking their own devices and computers. These
things were closed to prevent them from being copied or changed despite that they paid for it and own
it. These are hackers who hacked programs, music, and movies they bought so it looked, behaved, and
sounded the way they wanted to or played on other devices they bought and owned and were
prosecuted for it. Especially when they openly shared their ideas with others. Hackers will find that any
closed source software they buy may be illegal to hack, even if it's just to check for themselves that it's
secure enough to run on their own computer. This is because many of the things that you purchase may

come with Copyright and a contract as an End User License Agreement (EULA) that says you can't.
And you agree to it when you open or install the product, even if you can't read it or find out about it
after you've opened or installed the product. Yes, that's sneaky and unfair.
But that's all the more reason to teach young people to hack. You see, education is open. It can be
legally hacked to teach kids to think openly, be inspired, be curious, and thus, to be a hacker. What
hacking is really about is taking control of something if you don't like how it works. Why would you do
this? To have the freedom to make something you own do what you want. And to keep others from
changing something you own back to the original form or copying all your ideas, drawings, writings,
and pictures to a cloud somewhere to be controlled by someone else who claims it's for your "best
interest."
As a hacker, you know what your own best interest is. Sometimes you buy something and the company
you bought it from will attempt to forcefully or slyly make sure you can't customize it or change it
beyond their rules. You can't play it somewhere else or use it any other way than as intended,
supposedly to protect you. And that might be okay to agree to as long as you accept the fact that if you
break it then you can't expect them to fix it or replace it. That would mean that hacking something you
own does more than make it yours, it makes it irrevocably and undeniably yours. As scary as that may
sound to some, it certainly has its advantages. Especially if you want to keep others, like the company
that made it and the marketing company they're re-selling your information and habits to, out of your
stuff.
And finally, of course knowing how to hack makes you more secure. For many, many people, security
is about putting a product in place, whether that's a lock or an alarm or a firewall or anything that
theoretically keeps them secure. But sometimes those products don't work as well they should, or they
come with their own problems that just increase your "Attack Surface," when a security product should
be shrinking it. (The Attack Surface is all the ways, all the interactions, that allow for something or
someone to be attacked.)
And yeah, good luck getting that product improved in a mass-marketing, pay-as-you-go, copyrighted,
closed-source, "you bought it as-is and that's what you have to live with" kind of world. That's why it's
so important to know how to hack your security. A hacker wouldn't buy the same padlock you would
because a hacker sees locks in terms of how many seconds they would need to open it. Hackers learn to
analyze a product and figure out where it fails and how to change it so it works better. Then they might
have to hack it some more to keep that company they bought it from, from changing it back to the
default!
So hacking in terms of breaking security is just one area that hacking is useful, because without being
able to do that, you may have to give up some freedom or some privacy that you don't want to give up.
(And some of you may not care right now about certain things you do or say or post, but the Internet
has a long memory and it's getting better and better at helping others recall those memories of you.
What goes on the net stays on the net. And kids today are pretty much born on the net.) Not to mention
technology is getting more and more out of our ability to control it. That mobile phone of yours or that
new flatscreen with built-in camera for Skype are likely doing things that you don't know and don't
control with what they see and hear. It takes some hacking to wrestle that control back.
Schools and educators who read this and want to teach their students to hack, and what hacking can be,
need to be aware upfront that it won't be easy. There will be resistance from closed minds. School
administrations may also need to contend with the fact that hacking some things may be illegal in their
state, and they will need to get open source hardware and software to try to stay on the legal side of

things. When teaching students how to hack and what hacking is, it can be hard to do with words. Try
experiences and putting it into practice to really get your point across.
Free, open projects like Hacker Highschool can help kids develop the skills, feeling, and intuition
through practice with support so they don't break the wrong things. The possibility of breaking
something is simply part of the process, and should not be a factor keeping teachers and schools from
teaching hacking. They should provide that support with an open source and open minded effort.

Get more contributors to your project with better

documentation
By Amye Scavarda (originally published February 2014)
It is not uncommon to have a cycle of news around communities being unfriendly to women or
newcomers or people who aren't already there. By 'news' I mean someone posts something that is close
to their heart about some unjustice and other people comment on it or write their own posts and
generally, the moral of the story is: But we should be better than this!
This is normal and desired behavior as part of the overall community. This cycle is a good thing
because it causes people to think about their behavior as community members and what it's like to be
an outsider and how they can improve. These are all positive steps because it springs from an honest
desire to be better people. That's awesome.
Lately, I've been poking in areas of technology where I don't tend to tread often. One area has been
picking up a new piece of technology by looking at the documentation. This particular journey began
by being a Glass Explorer, and that's a story that I've talked about on my own blog at amye.org, so I
won't recap it here. But, late one night, as I was churning through documentation on what Android will
actually do and all of these (frankly amazing) things that your smartphone hardware has the capability
of doing (ambient air pressure, anyone?), it struck me that documentation is one of the great levelers of
our time.
Everyone has to read documentation. Everyone. You know those times where you jump in and don't
bother to read the manual and then wonder why it didn't work? Well, yes... this happens to everyone.
The person 'just downloading to try it out' and the person who wrote vast swathes of the code both have
a vested interest in documentation. Granted, there are different spectrums to their interest, but they are
both valid. I think of it a little bit like the 3rd grade student who's just learning to read music and the
professional pianist who can sightread instantlybut, they both need the score to know what the next
notes to play are.
Given that context, your documentation in your open source community says something about what
you expect your community to be. I realize that I am going to get plenty of comments about how your
code is self-documenting. No, dear sirs and madams, it very much isn't. Expecting your code to be selfdocumenting is like marking individual trees in your forest without paying attention to where the forest
lives. Is this in the arctic? The tropics? What sort of creatures am I likely to find under that rock when I
pull it up? What am I looking at and where do I expect to be next?
I'm enjoying working through the Android documentation because it's a platform and it lets you know
at nearly every turn. It's clearly defined and laid out, but there are still pieces of the vocabulary that are
unfamiliar.
I ran across this tweet by @relsqui a while back and it has stuck with me...
Theory: Lack of documentation promotes impostor syndrome. 'I must be supposed to
know this already/be able to figure it out on my own ...'

Here's why I've held onto itit might be a theory but a theory is the highest scientific law, and it's up to
us to disprove it. There's plenty that you can do; just keeping a running text document as you get
through a project is helpful as well.
Bottom line: If you're not going to document what you did for other people, how about doing it for
your future self who will come back in six weeks and not remember where you were going for?
Open source tools to build your best business
By Nabeel Hussain (originally published February 2014)
In January 2013, I started exploring open source solutions to help implement my business idea. I used
Wordpress, Joomla, and OpenShift to create FilmBoxFestival, a platform for streaming documentary
films. Note: It is still in the testing phase.
I created, validated, and gained traction for my busines idea due to the speed which these open source
tools offered. So, if you're an entrepreneur, I encourage you to explore open source possibilities. Here
are some of the things I learned.

Identify feature sets for functionality

Open source solutions are modular in nature. Often, by breaking down the final product into smaller
features it becomes easier to find modules and plugins with the functionality you want. For example,
one of the features I wanted to implement for FilmBoxFestival was greater interactivity between
readers. Instead of looking for one plugin to do this, I broke it down into a separate set of features, such
as sharing and discussion forums, then I was able to find individual plugins for sharing and discussions
because open source broadened the choices of solutions available and provided off-the-shelf options to
create the solution I wanted.

Look for new tools

Always be on the lookout for new plugins, tools, and approaches to implementing the features you
want for your business. The open source community is very active, and new solutions are always being
developed. For example, with FilmBoxFestival I wanted an integrated payment system which
showcased preview videos and allowed buyers to watch the documentaries they have purchased. I
searched for over 3 months for a payment solution with these features before I came across Gumroad, a
service designed for streaming content that also emails a secure and accessible link to the buyer.

Document, backup, and test at every step

Because open source solutions are so flexible and modular, it is possible for the functionality to break
when modules are installed that have similar or complimentary functionalities. It is imperative that you
discipline yourself into documenting, backing up, and testing your web solutions as you go. On at least
two occasions I had to rebuild FilmBoxFestival from scratch. On both occasions I was able to recreate
the website in under a day because of my systematic approach to documentation, recovery, and testing.
Similarly, some plugins I installed worked on one browser but did not work on another. It was only by
testing that I found the fault and was able to contact the plugin creator; then we began working on a
solution.

While I was building and developing my business, the open source community provided excellent
technical support and documentation. As an entrepreneur, open source solutions present a unique
opportunity to develop your business in a cost-effective, rapid, and efficient manner.

Things newcomers to open source rarely ask but

often wonder
By Shauna Gordon-McKeon (originally published February 2014)
Open Source Comes to Campus is an event series run by OpenHatch that introduces college students to
open source tools, projects, and culture. Whenever we get a new-to-us question at an event, we write it
down and answer it more fully on our blog. Heres a collection of "Infrequently Asked Questions" that
are especially relevant for newcomers to open source projects.

Q: Im worried that Ill be a burden on a project because Im

so new. What kind of effort does a project have to make to
build an open source community?
A: First of all, you should know that expert open source community builders like Linus Torvalds
understand this tension between training new contributors and the time it takes from existing
maintainers to mentor them. Ill quote two paragraphs from a 2004 post Linus made on the Linux
kernel list:
On Tue, 21 Dec 2004, Jesper Juhl wrote:
Should I just stop attemting to make these trivial cleanups/fixes/whatever patches? are they
more noice than gain? am I being a pain to more skilled people on lkml or can you all live
with my, sometimes quite ignorant, patches? I do try to learn from the feedback I get, and I
like to think that my patches are gradually getting a bit better, but if Im more of a bother
than a help I might as well stop.
Linus replied:
To me, the biggest thing with small patches is not necessarily the patch itself. I think that
much more important than the patch is the fact that people get used to the notion that they
can change the kernelnot just on an intellectual level (I understand that the GPL means
that I have theright to change my kernel), but on a more practical level (Hey, I did that
small change).
Another thing to keep in mind that is, for most projects, the project leader is the only contributor
(source). Consider this: The act of bugging them with questions as a newcomer can make them more
enthusiastic about the project as a whole!
If it were trivial to build an easily accessible open source community, virtually all projects would do it.
There is some effort involved. Of course, a lot of the work that makes a project welcoming to
newcomersgood documentation and setup guides, a well-maintained issue tracker, active
development, standards of conduct in the communitymakes the project better for everybody. But it

does take time and energy, which many communities of projects arent willing to expend. Thats why
OpenHatch exists! We know that some projects put more effort into welcoming contributors, and we
want to help you find those projects.
The kinds of projects that welcome newcomers dont see you as a burden. They see you as a huge help
even when youre struggling to understand bugs in the issue tracker or get the development
environment set up. When you ask a member of an open source project for help, that gives them
important information about what part of their project is confusing or incorrect. The questions you ask
and guidance you need lets them know how help others later on. And of course, once youve gotten
familiar with the project, youll be able to help even more. The right kinds of project see that potential
in you and want to work with you to get there.
Two rules of thumb for people who worry about being too much of a bother (which includes us,
sometimes!): First, if people on the mailing list or the bug tracker havent told you to stop talking, then
youre probably okay, even if they havent replied to you yet. Second, if you want another opinion, just
join the #openhatch IRC channel and ask us.

Q: How do open source projects review changes, and how do

those changes differ from a process like that of Wikipedia?
A: One key cultural element of Wikipedia, at least so far in its history, is that anyones edits to English
Wikipedia immediately become part of the live version of the encyclopedia. By contrast, to maintain
quality, open source projects typically permit only a handful of people to directly merge changes into
the main project. Therefore, submitted changes go through review.
Different communities have different standards and processes. Sometimes, there is no review at all, just
automatic merging by the maintainer. In other cases, like Linux, submissions go to a mailing list for
review. Others, like the OpenHatch web app, use web-based tools like GitHub pull requests. A great
reference for a more complicated process is the OpenStack Gerrit Workflow documentation page.

Q: How do you make time to contribute to open source when

youre a busy student?
A: By simply using open source programs, you are uniquely positioned to help other users. Dont
forget that helping people use the software is a substantial contribution to the community! By
becoming an expert in whichever programs you use, you will also gain the knowledge to help convert
bugs filed by others into actionable reports for the main developers. And once you reach that point, you
might find it easier to just fix the issue!
That said, it can be daunting to add another activity to schedules already stuffed full of classes, paid
work, and student life. One way to approach open source is to see it not as an alternative to doing
schoolwork but as part of your education. For computer science majors, open source projects are a
great way to practice the concepts youre being taught in class. In the others sciences, learning how to
use and contribute to open source tools such as R or Octave (or ImageJ or PsychoPy or JMARS) can
help you excel when doing laboratory workand it looks great on your resume. Even in the arts and
humanities, learning about open source tools such as Processing can help you succeed.

For students who work while theyre at school, open source projects can be potential employers. You
can apply for Google Summer of Code or the GNOME Outreach Program and do a paid internship at
an open source project. Individual companies working with open source may hire students that show
enough interest and ability. You can even employ yourself using open sourcefor instance, you could
do freelance work making websites and applications by using open source tools like WordPress and
Drupal.
You can make open source a part of your social life as well. Join (or start) a Students For Free Culture
chapter on your campus or invite friends over for a bug-fixing party.
Finally, remember that your contributions to open source can be as big or as small as you want them to
be. If you only have time to spend a few hours a month writing documentation or fixing small bugs in a
project, thats greatthe skills youre learning and connections youre making will serve you well if
you ever decide to get more involved.

Q: What is the difference between source downloads for

developers and downloads for users? Whats a stable
release?
A: Open source projects often release the program in a few different ways. Typically, if you are trying
to contribute, you will want the latest source code cloned or 'checked out' from the projects version
control system. If you are just trying to use the program, you typically want a user-oriented download.
Many programs source code cant be executed directly on a computerit must be 'compiled', which
turns it from human-readable text into machine-executable binary. The most common languages where
this is true are Java, C, and C++. Therefore, the most useful download for a person who wants to run a
project like OpenOffice, which is mostly written in C++, would be a compiled version specific to their
operating system (for example, a Windows-specific build). By contrast, if you want to contribute to the
program, you should act similarly to how the main developer actsthat is, by using a version control
system on the editable program text, the source code.
Another important concept is the stable release. During development, people make contributions that
break the program, conflict with other changes, or are simply unfinished. At any given point the most
recent version might be completely unusable. So, maintainers periodically work towards releases
(noun), which are tested to make sure theyre usable. If they are, maintainers release (verb) it.
So if youre a user, youll want the stable release most appropriate to your operating system and
computer. If you want to contribute, youll want the latest, non-compiled version.

Q: Are all open source projects welcoming to newcomers?

How can you tell when the communities around a project are
filled with jerks?
A: Not all open source projects are welcoming to newcomers. Not all open source projects need to be.
Some projects benefit from keeping their communities small and experienced. And, some maintainers
simply dont have the energy or the inclination to mentor new people.

Theres nothing wrong with that, but its a shame when newcomers try to get involved with a project
that isnt interested in involving them. Its a frustrating experience for everyone and unnecessary when
there are plenty of people whod be excited to work with them.
So how can you find a good project for you, a newcomer, to contribute to? Here are some good signs to
look for:
A large, active community is more likely to have members who can take the time to mentor. It also
means that contributions will be acted on more quickly.
Good documentation and demos mean that developers have thought about how to introduce people to
their project.
Some projects have Codes of Conduct/Diversity Statements, which demonstrate that the community
is trying to be a safe and welcoming space.
Projects that are part of Google Summer of Code or the GNOME Outreach Program for Women have
made a commitment to being good environments for newcomers.
At OpenHatch, we try to identify projects that are especially good for newcomers. Were also
developing a list of OpenHatch-affiliated projects that are working with us to make contributing to their
projects as easy as possible. (If youd like to be on that list, let us know!) Feel free to contact us and ask
us for recommendations or if a particular project is known to be good for newcomers.
Of course, theres a difference between not having the time and energy to help newcomers and being
actively mean or even abusive about it. If you experience the latter and our comfortable telling us about
it, well do our best to support you. OpenHatch people are always willing to provide advice on projects
to join, either to help you find a great experience or to make the most of a bad experience. Find us on
on IRC (#openhatch on irc.freenode.net) or email us [email protected]. You can also join groups
such as Systers or the Empowermentors Collective, which may help you navigate the free software
community.

More resources
This article has been a collection of information gathered during Open Source Comes to Campus
events:
Infrequently Asked Questions: Wellesley College
Infrequently Asked Questions: UMass Amherst
Infrequently Asked Questions: Bloomington
Read more posts about this event series on our blog.
For blog posts about getting involved with OpenHatch, read about the experiences of two of our
contributors: Britta and Mandar.

A beginners guide to understanding OpenStack

By Jason Hibbets (originally published February 2014)
The more I learn about OpenStack, the more I see why there is so much buzz about the technology as
well as about the community of developers and users. In a poll hosted on Opensource.com, we
discovered that many of our readers are curious and eager to learn more about OpenStack. For those
new to this technology, OpenStack can be described as a set of software tools for building and
managing cloud computing platforms for public and private clouds.
Opensource.com has started gathering resources to help our readers learn what OpenStack is and what
it can do:
What is OpenStack?
For an overview, see our What is OpenStack? page or visit openstack.org.
OpenStack contributions and community
See Rich Bowen's article: How to contribute to OpenStack.
OpenStack technology and more
For a deeper dive into the technology (like, the components that make OpenStack scalable) and more
on the OpenStack Foundation, begin your discovery with these videos that we recommend.

Recommended videos
Introduction to OpenStack with Sandy Walsh from Rackspace
This is a 30 minute video that is one the best videos I've come across that can help introduce
OpenStack to someone completely new to the project. The talk is not too technical and gives a broad
overview of the project and the architecture. Walsh talks about what OpenStack is, what it is not, how
the project got started, some of the core projects, and he outlines the architecture and scalability of
OpenStack.

Overview of OpenStack and the OpenStack Foundation with Mark Collier

This is a 35 minute video with Mark Collier, COO of the OpenStack Foundation, where he gives an
overview of OpenStack and goes into details about the community and the OpenStack Foundation.

OpenStack 101 with Joshua McKenty from Piston Cloud Computing

This is a 40 minute video that covers the history of OpenStack, an overview of the project (including
debunks), provides a technical overview of each of the component, and covers the project governance.
McKenty was part of the original OpenStack release and was the architect and team lead at NASA that

build the Nova volume, network, and compute components prior to OpenStack.

OpenStack Basics with Brian Gracely from Cisco

This is a 10 minute video that is very technical. It compares OpenStack to the existing cloud
infrastructure and maps out what many technologist are familiar with to the OpenStack architecture.

OpenStack Architecture with Russell Bryant from Red Hat

This is a 45 minute video that is a technical deep dive into the OpenStack architecture. Bryant details
each of the core projects:
Identity (Keystone)
Dashboard (Horizon)
Orchestration (Heat)
Metering (Celiometer)
Object stroage (Swift)
Image service (Glance)
Networking (Quantum now Neutron)
Compute (Nova)

About This Series

The Open Voices eBook series highlights ways open source tools and open source values can change
the world. Read more at http://opensource.com/resources/ebooks.