This is pretty cool! I'm a hobby web dev that has worked with Django on personal projects. It's cool to see how the big boys do it. I'm already on my way to installing Zamboni(https://github.com/mozilla/zamboni/) on a Vagrant Virtual Machine - in other words, this has opened my eyes in terms of workflow for large scale Python/Django projects!
What can I do for Mozilla?
51–60 of 85 posts
Re: What can I do for Mozilla?
#52Would be cool if it went into greater detail.
"Oh, you're a C programmer? You can work on NSS".
Thanks for letting me know. I'll log that away. How about this:
"You're a C programmer? Here's an interesting bug targeted to the NSS component I've pulled from Mozilla's bug database which might catch your fancy"
Hm, that's interesting. How would I solve that? Maybe if I...no. Hm. Let me pull down the source code to see what would work here...
Re: What can I do for Mozilla?
#53There are other ways to contribute to Mozilla (beyond coding) listed on http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/ . Some of their web projects have amazing documentation for new contributors, such as Kitsune's documentation: http://kitsune.readthedocs.org/
Yes, as a non-programmer, I could do things like reproduce bugs on various operating systems (e.g. GNU/Linux various flavours with nvidia cards using proprietary drivers and Intel integrated graphics). I could also help with documentation.
Re: What can I do for Mozilla?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
They do seem to be looking for those, but as paid employees rather than volunteers.[1] Those roles are probably harder to outsource to the community. [1] https://careers.mozilla.org/en-US/
Can somebody tell me reasons why UI designers or UX specialists are more difficult to outsource? I know that many open source projects have difficulties attracting them, but I really don't know the reasons (any reason designers working in this field gave me also should apply to programmers - thus they also couldn't answer this question).
Are you a UI designer or UX specialist? If so, in what way would you like to use your skills to contribute to open source software?
Re: What can I do for Mozilla?
#55While this is a neat idea, it seems to fall to the same problem I've seen elsewhere, little to no transparency as to where a project is going. For example, I was suggested Shumway (JS flash emulator). I'm sent to the github page for it (https://github.com/mozilla/shumway). They give a small summary and a little info on getting an installation working. Nothing however I can see on where a new contributor would start with helping out. No road-map, no "we need this feature and no one has claimed to work on it yet", this bug needs to be fixed for the next release, etc.
I'll admit I've never contributed to FOSS so maybe a veteran can fill me in but I see this a lot with projects. Some have decent issue/bug tracking, but I often find it very difficult to determine how a project is supposed to progress, what features are needed for the next release, where do they stand currently, etc. I assume a lot is decided out-of-band through e-mails and IRC.
Re: What can I do for Mozilla?
#56Would be cool if it went into greater detail. "Oh, you're a C programmer? You can work on NSS". Thanks for letting me know. I'll log that away. How about this: "You're a C programmer? Here's an interesting bug targeted to the NSS component I've pulled from Mozilla's bug database which might catch your fancy" Hm, that's interesting. How would I solve that? Maybe if I...no. Hm. Let me pull down the source code to see w…
NSS is actually the only suggestion for C programmers (no matter how many times you click you're not interested).
Re: What can I do for Mozilla?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
They do seem to be looking for those, but as paid employees rather than volunteers.[1] Those roles are probably harder to outsource to the community. [1] https://careers.mozilla.org/en-US/
Can somebody tell me reasons why UI designers or UX specialists are more difficult to outsource? I know that many open source projects have difficulties attracting them, but I really don't know the reasons (any reason designers working in this field gave me also should apply to programmers - thus they also couldn't answer this question).
1) Visibility. Code isn't visible to the end-user, so it doesn't really matter how a programmer gets from point A to point B as long as it's bug free and efficient. UI/UX, on the other hand are exactly how your users define you, so it's not something you want to potentially leave to the programmer that just installed Gimp and learned how to use the shape tool.
2) Testing. Good UI and UX need to go through several rounds of highly controlled testing. The "controlled" part is the factor here--a group of guys in the basement isn't going to cut it, and there's no way to verify with open source communities that testing was done correctly.
3) Consistency. Design teams are able to churn out more consistent work once they've found their 'style'; multiple disparate designers are more likely to break that style.
4) Preventing design by committee. Pull request discussions for design changes could turn into disastrous free-for-alls that end up turning Firefox's chrome neon blue and each button red because the majority of random devs think it's 'cool'. Design is more successful as a dictatorship than a democracy.
Re: What can I do for Mozilla?
#58What about some more interesting applications... what could Mozilla do with some machine learning for example?
Re: What can I do for Mozilla?
#59This is pretty cool! I'm a hobby web dev that has worked with Django on personal projects. It's cool to see how the big boys do it. I'm already on my way to installing Zamboni( https://github.com/mozilla/zamboni/ ) on a Vagrant Virtual Machine - in other words, this has opened my eyes in terms of workflow for large scale Python/Django projects!
Best find yet while looking through Mozilla's web documentation is Playdoh, Mozilla's Web application base template:
http://playdoh.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html
https://github.com/mozilla/playdoh
This should be in every Django book!
Re: What can I do for Mozilla?
#60Download Chrome. Make Mozilla as fast as Chrome.