Beer Mug: contribute something small to an open-source project | Hacker News Reader

Beer Mug: contribute something small to an open-source project

code.dblock.org

13 pointsdblock14 comments

Haha, as the author of that commit, I'm embarrassed to see it here. Maybe it's a story, though.

I heard about Heroku Bartender from http://devopsweekly.com

It pushed me to finally use a Linode slice for which I had a $60 credit from http://appsumo.com and play with Ubuntu, which is outside my typical skill set.

I had fun installing Ruby, git, Postgres, and https://github.com/defunkt/cijoe on that slice. While stuff was installing, I added the favicon to Heroku Bartender.

There's a lot of cool software and tools out there. Open source, DevOps Weekly, etc are awesome for learning and playing.

Maybe I'm missing something because I'm not tuned into the Rails community, but what is going on here? Someone submitted a favicon to an open source project, and now it's on Hacker News?

A few things happened.

First, the contributor didn't observe, but actually contributed something useful. In turn, that made the developer really excited about it. And finally this is a fun contribution. Open source win.

I guess I'm just getting old but I really didn't understand any of that, and certainly don't understand why it's on HN.

I haven't flagged it, because I now realise that I probably just don't "get it", but I really don't.

I encourage YOU to make a small contribution like this to any open-source project. Even if it's as silly as a favicon.

I think it's the layout of your site plus the brevity of the post that confused everyone (including me). I couldn't distinguish what I was supposed to look at, what was image and what was post text, etc.

It's cool to celebrate "small" contributions to OS projects, because it will encourage more to do the same. But, I'd write up a bit more explaining that, especially for HN.

Great feedback. I've edited the post "Even small and silly as this one, open-source contributions are very valuable. I know how excited Sebastian was that his first open-source project had a pull request. I know how users will love to see a cool icon in their favorites when they use Heroku-Bartender. It’s an open-source win. Go contribute something small to any open-source project – even if it’s a favicon!"

And you know that I don't because ... ?

You as the "general you", the reader.

Ah.

Well might I suggest that YOU need to work on your writing to make sure it's not mis-understood, and it's clear what message you're trying to deliver. YOU need to think of your audience, and how what you've written might be interpreted. Sometimes the most obvious meaning to YOU is not the one that people will most often see.

And of course I mean YOU as in the "general you", the reader.

And the only comment is on the site is:

"Posted to YC, vote up if you like: http://news.ycombinator.com/it...

Sounds like someone seeking karma.

Sorry, I didn't realize people see it like this. I'll remove. Update: removed. I really just want to tell a very simple open-source story.

Hmm. I guess the "I don't have time to contribute to open source projects" excuse no longer holds any water!

newsworthy and I shall fork it.

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