GNOME is fun! How do I get more involved? There's a hundred ways. Hackers can skip straight to the developer site for things that need doing. If you want to help with development and you know C or another language used by GNOME, just look for missing software or missing features in existing software. Then contact the people listed in the MAINTAINERS, README or AUTHORS files in the source tarball telling them what you did or want to do. GNOME development is completely open. Anyone can join in. Do I need to learn C to help with GNOME? No! Well, you can if you want, but GNOME has bindings for a bunch of other languages if you prefer those. If you don't want to learn coding at all, don't feel you have to. There are plenty of other things that need doing and which have plenty of people willing to help you start: If you figure out how to do something, write it up and make it available for others to use: send it to gnome-list, put it on the web, and so on. If you figure out how to break something, report it! Bug reports are Good and Wonderful. There is even a program to help you write them and include all the relevant information: it's called bug-buddy. If you like writing -- or checking other people's writing -- consider getting involved with the GNOME Documentation Project and writing documentation: whether of APIs, applications, applets, how to alter something, anything you can't find described which you once needed to know. The GDP folks will try to help you as best they can. If you speak a language other than English, consider getting involved with the GNOME Translation Project: people translating the programs and documents into their own languages. Can you draw? Are you feeling generous enough to draw icons or create themes? Please feel free to. The GNOME Icons Project is always looking for icons that sit well with GNOME. Help other people out. If they're getting started with GNOME and you can help, do so. One way of helping GNOME is to avoid getting into rows about desktop environments, licences, window managers, Linux distributions and UNIX flavours. Honestly. It's lots of fun for many people, but it puts another group of people right off. "Why my preferred choice is good" is one thing. "Why everything else is rubbish" is not helpful. Really.