More on open source and technical writing

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how technical writers can help open source contributors get started, and in so doing ramp up our own contributions to open source projects. A colleague has now pointed me to another great post on a related theme: Documentation as a gateway to open source, by James Turnbull.

My post focuses on the complexity of the open source world, which makes it difficult for anyone to get started, even to make a small fix to the source code or the docs. As technical writers, we can help people jump at least the initial hurdles. We can add docs that describe how to complete any relevant licence agreement, edit a code file or a doc page,  send an update for review, and eventually submit the update to the repository. In documenting the process, we become our own test subjects, as we need to go through that very process in order to document it. Sound familiar? It’s what we do best.

James Turnbull’s post takes things further. He describes how to:

Find a project that you can contribute to.
Consider the etiquette of the open source community that you’ve chosen, before jumping in and making a contribution.
Decide what type of edits to make. Both James and I describe READMEs as a good place to start. James goes on to examine strings, errors, and commands, and a few other file types too.

If you’re interested in open source, I recommend James’s post. It’s a good read.