Disclaimer

Not trying to blame anyone here. I‘m just taking an idea I‘ve read and spinning it further:

Intro

A lot of people use free open source software (foss), Linux being one of them. But a lot less actually help make this software. If I ask them why, they always say „I don’t have the coding skills!“.

Maybe its worth pointing out that you don‘t need them. In a lot of cases it’s better to not have any so you can see stuff with a „consumer view“.

In that situation you can file issues on github and similar places. You can write descriptions that non technical people can understand. You can help translate and so on, all depending on your skills.

Other reasons?

I‘d really like to know so the foss community can talk about making it worthwile for non coders to participate.

  • megane-kun
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    6 months ago

    I came here to say something similar.

    Just writing documentation alone, is a skill worthy of a full-time job! Of course, there’d be people who can volunteer their time to do that, but without someone with such skill at least taking a look and making sure it’s understandable to someone who’s got no idea what’s going on? Let’s just say that open source software help documentation is filled with such examples.