Would you like to help support open source and free software but aren't exactly familiar with the subtleties of C memory management? Cash always helps. Short of that, telling the developers how great they are goes a long way, but if you really want to be part of the team and learn something along the way, help by testing software. This not only helps make the software better, but lets you learn about the software and the community, sharpens your own development skills and improves your attention to detail. Testing is actually a lot of work if done right. This article tries to point you at projects that need testing.
Proprietary software companies can pay for quality assurance they can
also get their customers to help with promises of free and early access
to new software. Check out the google beta testing directory
for all the opportunities out there to test software for corporations.
Open source software depends users to do this for free.
Projects have different levels of sophistication and needs in their
testing. Some, like PHP and Apache httpd, have entire test suites in
production, others just want to know if you can install it without
having your system lock up. Even with PHP and Apache, though, there
are ways to get your hands into the buggy stuff. For example, the many
apache modules are all in various states of buggery are some links to
the testing and quality assurance sections of some software packages
you are probably familiar with:
- PHP Quality Assurance Team
"The PHP/QA Team is a small group of developers whose primary goal is to support the PHP core developers by providing them with timely quality assurance. " Apache httpd: Test the latest release of 2.0 or any of the modules.
- Mozilla "Helping with Quality Assurance"
- Sourceforge hosts thousands of small and large projects, some of which are alive and need testers.
- freshmeat also has many projects in development.
- how to help with open office:
"So, let's say that you've decided to help out. Where do you start? Well, as Linus Torvalds has said about Linux, one of the chief advantages of Open Source methodology is that it allows regular users to improve the product, just by using the product, documenting the bugs and issues encountered, and submitting these findings to the relevant project within OpenOffice.org. "
- I can tell you just from trying to write this article that PostNuke still has lots of quality assurance needs!
- HTMLArea has a beta version that works with Mozilla that needs testing.
I have found the software testing I have done very rewarding. I always learn something and I feel like I have a connection with the developers if I give a lot of feedback.
