Re: [gfsd]I would like to volunteer

[Janet Casey]

Hi Michael,

I apologize for taking so long to get back to you- I was out of the
office unexpectedly for a couple of days.

Take a look at http://www.gnu.org/directory/help.html for an overview
of what's needed for the Directory; the template that we use (there's
a link to it) will show you what information we look for in each
package. It's very important to check the licensing for each package
to ensure that all the source code is acceptably free.

You can also look at
http://www.gnu.org/directory/help.html#adding-entries specifically for
writing up entries for the Directory. Working with the entries
themselves, writing up new ones and maintaining old ones gives you a
really good feel for what work is being done: what kind of packages
are being written, what languages are being used, what features are
being added, etc.

Are most important technical needs right now are to get a Web
interface up and running so developers can enter packages them
selves. We now have some perl scripts that convert the text files that
are in CVS to the Web page itself. So if you know perl, you could work
with those; however, php3 seems to be very popular for this kind of
thing and while php may not be able to do as much as perl or certainly
C, it seems very easy to learn and very appropriate for this kind of
job.

That's what the Directory needs; if after looking at the Directory you
don't find ahything that appeals to you, please write yo
<address@hidden>. This is the addresss for the GNU volunteer
coordinators; they have a complete list of projects and I'm sure they
can find something that you will enjoy and that will benefit the FSF
and free software.


Thanks for offering to help!



Janet Casey
Free Software Foundation
http://www.gnu.org
address@hidden