this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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If you don't have coding skills, why don't you help foss software by making it more user friendly instead? (lemmy.giftedmc.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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.

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[–] webjukebox 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I do with translations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cool! I like the modern translation tools where you can submit sentence by sentence. Weblate I think is one called. Works great.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I've been doing a lot of translations for Debian into my native language, and the most important factor there is being part of a translation team of people. Many times the english original is ambiguous or just poorly written by a programmer, and with a team you can get help and find the intended meaning and its proper translation. We read each others translations and come up with constructive criticisms.
To me, what makes or breaks good work is the organisation and cooperation between people: the community. I believe the great challenge of FOSS is the organisation of people and their efforts.