Non-code contribution

Hello! I would like to contribute to RIOT OS, but do not have a technical background. So contributing to code would not be such good idea… :slight_smile: In what other (non-coding) ways can I contribute?

Hello, and welcome to the project!

We don’t maintain a list of non-code tasks, but there are a few things that come to mind:

  • Documentation is an area that often profits from the point of view of someone who is not down to their knuckles in code. There are issues labelled with Area: doc (although the classification may not be accurate all the time); also, checking existing documentation for both internal consistency and a narrative flow are highly appreciated works.

  • Issue reproduction is another non-code and slightly more technical item. For that, you could look at reported bugs and try to reproduce the reported behavior – all of “Yes, happens the same when I do it”, “It doesn’t do that on my system” and “The issue doesn’t contain all information to run the reporter’s case” are valuable reports.

    This can be done both on new issues on which work hasn’t started (making it easier to fix them), and on old ones where either a solution has been proposed but not tested by the original reporter, or old ones that might already have been fixed without noticing that the issue was reported twice.

There are sure more things that can be done without writing code, but those could be good starting points. You’re welcome to give any of those a try.

If you get stuck anywhere and there’s nobody on the issue that can get you unstuck, don’t hesitate to @-mention people of whom you think or just guess could help get things going – even if they’re busy elsewhere, they might find the right person to ping instead. One of the fast ways to get feedback is the matrix chat, if you like real-time text communication.

Besides the points @chrysn mentioned.

I would love to contribute more to RIOT and actually get product into peoples hands that utilize RIOT. Right now, I am using the Arduino IDE, since the barrier of entrance is smaller and there is a larger existing market of tinkerer that already use it. But I also would love to branch out from there and get people into more professional IoT development. Especially with RIOT and the W3C Web of Things standards. What I could actually need help with: I have no clue about the whole EU funds situation. I tried to apply for one once, but that didn’t go very well… It was quite time consuming and I apparently didn’t met the critieria. Even though I found it quite silly, since it was about supporting standartization efforts and what I send them was supposed to do exactly that. Any way, if you are more familiar with that topic, or interested in getting familiar with it, that would be such a huge help. Maybe it would be a help for other contributing to RIOT as well.

Thank you for your reactions!

This seems like a nice starting point for me. It will also get more familiar with the RIOT project. I will look it up!

Nice, this is something I would like to dive in a bit (probably after some looking into the documentation).

Good to know, thanks!

That is something to keep an eye on in the future indeed. I will first start with some things @chrysn mentioned, since I have no knowledge about funding as well, unfortunately.

@citrullin: if this topic is still relevant, you may want to look into NLnet grants. I have looked into this recently and the NGI Zero Core and NGI Zero Common seem relevant to RIOT. If you check the eligibility page of both grants you can check what type of activities qualify for the financial support.

They are open for new proposals every 2 months, current deadline is April 1. Application should only take 1-2 hours. So if you would receive a rejection, you can update and send in a proposal for the next round.

I have no experience with this, but maybe it is useful for you or anyone else in the community!