Comments on: Open Thread: How do you Give Back?

By: Alana Post

Alana Post — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:44:40 +0000

I volunteer for ArtVan, a mobile art therapy unit designed to bring “hope through creativity and community” to low-income and at-risk youth in areas that typically do not receive school funding for artwork and arts education. I volunteer with a few other organizations, and donate to some causes, but ArtVan is probably the most relevant to what I do for a living.

Also: most of the time, I prefer to spend my give-back time away from computers. I need a lot of diversity in my life’s activities!

@Jenn S.: what a wonderful concept. (Makes me reconsider my above statement!) Reminds me of ArtVan, but with computers instead of crayons (:

By: walter wimberly

walter wimberly — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:10:24 +0000

I personally teach at the local community college, publish an ad free blog helping small business owners with the Internet and I have developed several free JavaScript libraries for people to download an use. (two are available now, 2 more should be up soon)

By: Thejesh GN

Thejesh GN — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:40:28 +0000

- I will answer on many email lists.
-Recently started donating money for coffee to favorite projects.

By: Iván Lasso

Iván Lasso — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:47:24 +0000

I post my tutorial comics under a CC-like license, and I wrote how-tos for begginners… and another stuff.

By: sharfah

sharfah — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:02:15 +0000

- I have a blog, http://fahdshariff.blogspot.com, where I write about my programming challenges and how I solved them

- I answer (and post) questions on forums such as the Sun’s Developer Forum, JavaRanch, Google Groups, Yahoo! Answers etc.

- I post comments on websites such as this one, Slashdot, Digg etc.

- I update Wikipedia if I find I have something valuable to add to an article I’ve read.

By: caschy

caschy — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:10:39 +0000

I wrote all in my blog.

By: Simon

Simon — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:53:56 +0000

Another good idea is translation open source software to your own language. It makes it more accessible for others and you have a copy in your own language if you prefer.

By: Simon

Simon — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:52:32 +0000

I certainly feel it itching and try to give back by:

- writing articles on my own webste
- writing free, small and open source Mac OS X apps
- adding data to OpenStreetMaps, Freebase and Wikipedia
- giving tons of feedback for beta (web)apps

Love to add data to “open” systems with an API. OpenStreetMaps for example is a good example as I can pull data out of it with an API the next time I need a map without Google logo so adding data helps other while at the same time I may benefit as well.

By: Jenn S.

Jenn S. — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:48:47 +0000

I volunteer in the evenings one day a week for a “computer clubhouse” in my neighborhood – its a drop-in center for teens to keep them away from the gangs, but a free-for-all creative space. They can learn web design, blogging, video game design, music recording, movie making – whatever the kids want to learn. And I volunteer to teach them.

And it truly is fascinating to see how kids use the tools we use for work in totally different ways to create very cool stuff. I may learn more from them, than they from me.

Check and see if there’s a computer clubhouse near you:
http://www.computerclubhouse.org/