Hi all,
I stamp out C++ code (and VB, and I've dabbled in Python) for a win-centric shop. I've never participated in an open source project.

So what's it like...how's it work? I'm assuming that CVS is the source code control mechanism, akin to Visual Source Safe. I suppose we take on some angle of the code base and then submit it for review/approval/inclusion.

I've been using Blender for 2+ years and I'm thrilled to poke around the source. Not sure how much I can contrib, but I'm curious to know the ins and outs of a typical open source project...

Ton..thanks for doing this!

shaftoe wrote:

Hi all,

Welcome!

First of all, I wouldn't say that Blender is currently a typical "mainstream" open source project. It is similar to Mozilla and OpenOffice.org in that the code first grew up in a proprietary environment (Netscape and StarOffice) and only later became free.

Other important pointers are http://www.gnu.org/ and http://www.opensource.org/ . You find a lot of other projects at http://freshmeat.net/ , http://sourceforge.net/ , and http://savannah.gnu.org/ .
_________________
Felix

Actually, though I'm not a coder myself, I can say that the open model probably works pretty similarly to a closed shop kind of team effort. The only difference is that here involvment is mostly free form and you can add/fix/freelance around and poke.

Looking at most of the conversations going on here, I'm not sure how the model will work. It could be like the linux kernel, based on a mailing list approach with some head honcho approving/commiting stuff to the main tree (most of this is based around fixes and patches and tweaks and such, less on feature implementation... It's a kernel!) , or it could work like OpenOffice, where in general a person tackles a given task to create a certain facet of the program or whatever.

Open development is really quite cool. I think that the same kind of teamwork applies here as it does to a corporate team.

-munkie