[qpiox]

Maintaining a package is not as hard as developing software. You don't need to know algorithms, you don't need to know programming, you just need to know how to start a compiler and packaging software from the command line and read errors from the log.

If you are an active developer in the language that is used it will be easier, but you can do it even if you are not.

Example. Todays news here, is the latest release of Kodi. Debian does not have the most recent version. Some months ago I had an issue with the Kodi from the debian multimedia repo, so I decided to build it from source. It took me the better part of a day to have all the build tools installed and set-up everything, starting from zero. But in the end I had the latest Kodi running and it was running like that for 5 months and I even forget that I built it.

I managed to do that without even looking into the source code. In fact if you ask me what programming language is used to develop Kodi - I really don't know and don't remember.

Package maintainance is more about testing than about building.

So a list like this can serve as a guide in the process of choosing where to help. Just sort by number of users that use the software and go down the list until you find something that you use daily and where you would like to have the most recent version available and would volunteer your effort for 2-3 years (it is not really helpful if maintainers change every couple of months).

[slavik81]

Thank you. That is useful information.

I'll also have to find something my employer is happy with me working on, but I think you've pretty clearly laid out what I'd be signing up for, and I appreciate it.