The FSF40 hackathon is this weekend. Here's what you need to know

It's a little hard to believe, but the Free Software Foundation (FSF)'s 40th anniversary free software hackathon is almost upon us. From 10:00 EST on November 21 through 10:00 EST November 23, we will work on six different free software projects. Here's how to get involved in this weekend's festivities and leave your mark on one of the participating projects.

Participating projects

The first step to contributing (we're excited you're here!) is to choose a project that you'd like to get involved with during the hackathon. Most participating projects will have at least one task intended for non-programmers, so if you don't know a programming language or have documentation skills, you can still participate!

The full list of participating projects is as follows:

• The Free Software Directory, the FSF's free software catalog;
• GNU Boot, a boot software distribution that can replace nonfree boot software like BIOS or UEFI on specific computers;
• GNU Guix, a reproducible package manager;
  
• Lewa, an interactive platform to learn African writing systems;
  
• op-mattermost, OpenProject integration for Mattermost; and
  
• Org Mode, the notes management and organizer for GNU Emacs.
  

Registration

If you haven't already registered for the project(s) you've chosen, we ask that you register for the hackathon so that we can give the mentors one last count of how many people they should expect to drop in over the weekend. Registering doesn't just help the maintainers of Guix, Lewa, and the rest know how many people to expect: it also gives us here at the FSF a good idea of how effective initiatives like this one are.

To register, you'll need an FSF account. You do not need to be an FSF associate member to participate. Account registration and hackathon registration are gratis.

Please also familiarize yourself with the FSF's safe space policy before participating in the hackathon or any FSF40 event.

Where to go

Following the FSF's introduction in the hackathon-general Galene room at 10:00 EST on Friday morning, the best way of finding out where to go to participate for a given project is to join #fsf-hackathon on the Libera.chat IRC network, which we'll be using for basic coordination over the weekend. Links for each project's Galene videoconferencing room and any other relevant communication channels will be displayed in the /topic for each channel.

However, if you already follow a specific project's development, you can get a few seconds' head-start by joining that project's IRC channel directly, for example: #orgmode for everyone's favorite free software outliner, or #guix for GNU's advanced package manager and GNU/Linux distribution. Be advised that any pre-existing channel falls outside the scope of the FSF's safe space policy, and that you're likely to encounter more general conversations in larger channels.

Making your contribution

Once you've chosen which project you'd like to contribute to (you're not limited to only one!), it would be a good idea to familiarize yourself with the specific project's version control repository (like this one for Org mode) while waiting for more specific instructions from the mentor(s) for each specific project. You'll be working closely with the mentors to do your work, submit your patches, and make concrete improvements to that particular piece of free software.

Note: How much each project uses the FSF-provided Galene room or their own communication channels will vary from project to project. Each free software project has its own particular way of doing things, even if it has only one contributor! The FSF will post an updated list of links, IRC channels, and other pertinent information before the start of the hackathon.

Join the awards ceremony

FSF staff will be on hand to help put you in contact with the mentor(s) you'll be working with to make your contributions. Since this event is more hands-on and aimed at improving free software, we won't be staging any side events.

Still, we plan to wrap things up in a big way. A jury we've assembled will be awarding prizes in three different categories: one to participants who have not contributed to a free software package before and another for diverse and inclusive teams. The most impactful contribution made during the hackathon will be recognized with a special prize. Join us back in the hackathon-general room at 10:00 EST on Sunday for the award announcements.

As this is the first time the FSF has planned an event like this in recent years, some details are subject to change. We've published our terms and conditions for participation, which we ask you familiarize yourself with before joining and contributing.

Projects like these are only made possible through the support of the free software community. We want to bring more events like this to you, but can only continue campaigning for your freedom with that same community behind us. Please consider helping us reach our fundraising goal of $400,000 USD by January 1, 2026 to support us in our work.

"Hackers at Junction 2015" © 2015 by Vmuru. This image is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.