Open Source programming
by I just realized I'm currently getting paid to improve an open source library, no huge changes and its a simple library. Basically, I had to investigate the usability of this package and it looked useful, but was lacking in some areas. There really wasn't anything else out there (its simple so most people write their own custom version), and we would have just rolled our own but I think it had its merits, so instead I decided to improve it. It's GPL so I'll submit my patches back to the developer, don't know if it'll be committed though. I think this is one of the things I love most about Java, so many open source libraries. I've submitted a few bug reports/fixes to other projects as well.
Now I've kinda got the bug to start my own project. I just need a good idea....
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I hear ya on that feeling you get to start a project. Ya get so motivated, want to be part of the cause, but it's so hard to keep dedicated to it.
Just Look at all the great ideas at sourceforge that ended up dormant. You can always pick up a project someone left if you're interested, or help out.
I use a lot of open source here for our new system we are developing. I've had to do a lot of platform specific fixes, I feel bad though, because I haven't used anything enough to actually submit the patches.
You could just subscribe to the dev mailing list and send the developers an email, they might patch it themselves.
technically you're obligated to do that by the licencse of the code. (at least GPL, not BSD though)
Well, I'm not using the code yet, when and if I do, then I will.
The fixes are merely only hacks, in C/C++ things are little more difficult because of linker, library, and kernal differences. So sometimes it's like a hack that changes the name of a function.