Linux or cloud open source projects that could use tech docs?

February 2, 2020 3:31 AM

Do you know of any open source projects that use Linux or cloud technology that could ALSO use tech docs, new or improved?

Looking for ways to build my tech writing portfolio in these areas. Thanks!

posted by Sheydem-tants to Technology (4 answers total)

Oh, so many! The Fedora Project always in need of tech writers. There's a project called Silverblue that is a variant of the Fedora Workstation that's experimenting with an "immutable" design using a different type of packaging and system updates that allow for rollbacks.

This would let you work with a project in deep need of documentation, and let you work on some technologies that are under fast development. Also it's a desktop focused project, so you wouldn't need to stand up a cloud at at home just to be able to test things and verify instructions, etc. (I've written docs for things like Apache CloudStack, and it gets frustrating when you have to spend more time doing setup and troubleshooting than actually writing.)

I'm sure that the Kubernetes project would welcome more hands doing tech docs, and that would be a good way to get visibility with a lot of companies that like to hire tech writers. You can probably get pretty far with miniKube for documentation purposes and not have to stand up a lot of infrastructure.

Is there anything that you use that's open source and fits your criteria? The projects you use and care about are the ones that you're going to have the best success and most fun working on.
posted by jzb at 4:55 AM on February 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

I put up a list on Reddit a year of so back that might help: A List of Open Source Projects with Volunteer Documentation Opportunities.

I'm not sure how relevant some of these are now, but here is a list of open source projects needing documentation from Hacktoberfest.

Google runs a Season of Docs where they match up tech writers with open source projects, but I'm not sure if it's started yet for 2020.

And don't forget about the Write the Docs Slack workspace. They just opened a #community-help-wanted channel for open source projects to post volunteer opportunities.
posted by ralan at 5:57 AM on February 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

I know 'joke' comments are not advised for the green but just now I concurrently noticed this: reposurgeon 4.0 has a serious documentation problem.
posted by sammyo at 6:07 AM on February 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Hi Sheydem-tants! An answer here may depend on how much time you would like to put in, whether you've ever used technologies like Git and Sphinx before, and what pre-existing software/programming skills you have. So talking a little more about those factors might help folks recommend specific projects.

I have a few recommendations in addition to those mentioned above. I contribute to some open source projects that could use your help as a technical writer, such as

* TUF (The Update Framework) and its companion in-toto, which help secure software downloads

* readme_renderer, which helps software authors check that their descriptions will show up correctly on a package browsing/download site

and I'll be around (often as "brainwane") if you want to ask questions.

Thanks for volunteering to help!
posted by brainwane at 11:17 AM on February 2, 2020 [2 favorites]