How You Can Help the GNU Project

Table of contents

• Guide to the GNU Project
• How to Help the GNU Project

Guide to helping the GNU Project

The GNU Volunteer Coordinators <gvc@gnu.org> can assist you if you wish to help the GNU Project. They will be able to put you in touch with other people interested in or working on similar projects. When you have selected a task from our task lists, please let them know you're interested in working on it.

Please let the GNU Volunteer Coordinators <gvc@gnu.org> know if you take on any task from this list. We want to keep track of what tasks our volunteers are working on.

For general questions about the GNU project, mail gnu@gnu.org and for questions and suggestions about this web site, mail webmasters@gnu.org.

How to Help the GNU Project

This list is ordered roughly with the more urgent items near the top. Please note that many things on this list link to larger, expanded lists.

• We are looking for someone willing to manage the education directory of the web site.
• If you are a good at Texinfo, you can help by reformatting some of our essays from our philosophy page into Texinfo.
• If you have experience running a USENET news spool, and have access to one, you can help get the gnu.* newsgroups working again, and set up proper gatewaying from our mailing lists to the newsgroups. Please contact <gvc@gnu.org> if you can work on this task.
• Volunteer to help compile a directory of known free software. This task entails downloading free software packages, digging up information about these packages, and checking and verifying the licenses of the programs.

  If you are interested in volunteering for this task, please contact <bug-directory@gnu.org>.

• Write, evaluate, and use free software.
  • Install and use free software. The easiest way to do that currently is to install and use a GNU/Linux system.

  • Evaluate free software.
    • You can become a GNU Software Evaluation Group member.

  • Write Free software.
    • The GNU Task List documents new tasks that need volunteers.
    • The Savannah Help Wanted page contains help wanted postings for GNU projects that are hosted on savannah.
    • The Help Wanted page lists released GNU Projects not hosted on savannah that are actively seeking more help.
    • The GNU Projects page lists new GNU Software under development that are actively seeking more help.
    When writing software, please follow the GNU Coding Standards and read Information For Maintainers of GNU Software as you maintain the software.

    If you need some resources to develop GNU Software, check the GNU Software Developer Resources web page.

• Write documentation for GNU software, using these resources, tips, and hints.

• Please help by writing better descriptions of GNU books in print.

• Volunteer as a proofreader by subscribing to the proofreaders mailinglist (you do this by sending a message with the word "subscribe" in the body to <proofreaders-request@gnu.org>

• Tell others about the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation by:
  • informing your friends about the GNU philosophy and software.

  • by both
    adding a link to GNU's home page to your home pages,
    and asking others to do so.

  • by both
    mirroring this web site as these sites are already doing,
    and asking others to do so.

• Help the FSF raise funds to help us write more free software and documentation by:
  • making a donation to the FSF.

  • ordering manuals, t-shirts and especially CD-ROMs from the FSF. Most of the FSF's funds come from selling copies of things that everyone is free to copy.

  • Convincing your office to order manuals, t-shirts, and especially CD-ROMs from the FSF.

  • Convincing your office to order a Deluxe Distribution from the FSF.

  • by selling free software and donating a part of the proceeds to the Free Software Foundation or some other free software development project. By funding development, you can advance the world of free software.

    Distributing free software is an opportunity to raise funds for development. Don't waste it!

• Volunteer to make sure that essays from our philosophy page and other GNU URLs are on and/or linked from WWW directory, portal, and various hierarchical web index sites, such as Yahoo!, dmoz.org, and Google. Get these sites to add detailed entries about our different web pages,. Make sure that essays from our philosophy page and other GNU URLs are linked to often in the appropriate categories.

  If you'd like to help us with this task, please contact the GNU Volunteer Coordinators <gvc@gnu.org>.

• Donate office supplies and office equipment to the FSF. Offer them to <fsforder@gnu.org>.

• Donate hardware to the FSF.

• Take on one of the jobs (14k characters) we need done for this web server.

• If you or your company work supporting or developing free software in some way, you can list yourself (or your company) in the GNU Service Directory.

• If you run a company that needs to hire people to work with free software, you can advertise on our Free Software Job Page.

FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. Other ways to contact the FSF.

Comments on these web pages to webmasters@www.gnu.org, send other questions to gnu@gnu.org.

Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated: $Date: 2001/07/20 03:33:14 $ $Author: brett $