Open Source Club Introduction
Welcome! This file exists to introduce people to what the OSC is, how OSC works, and where to find additional resources.
As always, if you spot an issue or want to improve something, please make a pull request!
Table of Contents
About OSC
What is the OSC?
OSC is the Open Source Club at the University of Florida. We are a community of makers, who want to solve problems and improve our world using open source projects.
We were founded in the Spring of 2016 as an official student organization at UF. The club is also a partnered Special Interest Group of the UF ACM chapter. In the summer of 2017 we helped start the Mozilla Open Source Student Network, a collection of university open source clubs across the country who help students contribute to open source.
What does the OSC do?
The OSC is first and foremost, about working on open source projects. Student choose what they want to work on, whether it be a totally new idea, or an existing project. Our meetings create a constructive atmosphere to help students collaborate in teams to grow their knowledge and skills!
We also preform technical talks on various open source topics. Anything from Linux to Typescript. Students are encouraged to submit ideas or even volunteer to give a talk.
Collaborating with other clubs is another one of our goals. We love to work with others on presentations, events, or projects! If you are interested in working together email [email protected].
Who's the OSC for?
If you:
- Are enthusiastic (or want to be enthusiastic) about open source
- Want to make cool and useful stuff
- Want to improve your community
- Just want to geek-out with others
Though we primarily work on open source software, you don't have to be a programmer to join. Open source applies to all sorts of fields, and so does this club!
How to Join
Sign up for our Facebook group for meeting announcements and join our Discord to communicate with other members and ask questions. And of course, come to our meetings! Introduce yourself, work on projects, and have fun.
The Basics
Meetings
We have a couple types of meetings. Check our Facebook for times and locations.
- Casual Coding Sessions are laid back meetings. You can work on projects, homework, or just hang out! They happen twice weekly. It's a great time to find people with similar interest and create something cool.
- General Body Meetings (GBMs) open up with a brief round of project updates. Following that, there is a tech talk on an open source technology. This is great for anyone to come in and learn. They happen every few weeks.
- Code Jams are a once a month workshop and hack sessions. Spend some time learning about an open source technology then work on projects using that tech!
Organization
The officers are listed below
- President: Keeps everything running, overseas projects and administrative tasks.
- Hunter Jarrell
- Vice President: Assists with president's responsibilities and in charge of tech talks.
- Brandon Clark
- Treasurer: Manages the budget, purchases resources, and procures funding.
- Logan Smith
- Secretary: Records minutes, reviews and keeps documentation up-to-date, and assists other officers.
- Andrew Whigham
- Social Chairs: Schedules meetings, sends out announcements, and creates social media posts.
- Ryan Aponte
- Santoshkrishna Tirumala
- Server Administrator: Handles access and maintainence of the club server.
- Jonathan Conlin
- External Relations Chair: Works with other clubs to do joint events and keep members up-to-date on other organizations.
- Haozhe Zhang
- USAB Representative: Works with the USAB to make sure our club is the best it can be.
- Dakota Rennemann
- Project Leads: Manages goals and tasks for projects, makes technical decisions, and serves as a resource for their project.
- Brandon Clark, Club Website, Back-End, and Admin Portal
- Alejandro Santacoloma, Marston vs West Video Game
- Hunter Jarrell, Ask-A-Gator, ALBot
- Will Owens, MuddySwamp
Projects
Active projects are official club projects that have an assigned project lead, are given club resources, and are the first projects mentioned to new members. You can find a list of active projects above under the Project Leads section.
If you have a project idea, mention it in the #ideas channel of our Discord and pitch it to other members at a meeting. If you get enough interest, we can make it an active project!
You aren't locked into a project either. Feel free to work around and see what interest you. Talk to the project lead and they'll find something for you to do.
What's Next
Learn about Open Source
Open Source (and Free Software) is the philosophy that the source code for an program should be: free to study, free to modify, and free to share (plus modifications) with everyone. It encourages open collaboration, pushes technological advancements, and produces software (though it can apply to other fields) that is usually higher quality, more secure, and privacy conscious. For software to be open source, it must have an appropriate license included with it. More on licenses here.
Working on a Project
We use Git to manage all of our projects. It makes it easy to track code changes and have multiple people work on a project at the same time. Plus it's open source! Find out more about Git and how we use it on GitHub here.
Before working on a project checkout their CONTRIBUTING.md file. It will explain where you can: find issues, ask questions, read documentation, how to style code, and how to submit changes. You can also ask the project lead for help.
In addition to the LICENSE.md and CONTRIBUTING.md file, you may see a lot of other files that aren't code in a project repository. This explanation should help describe the different types of files you'll typically find in out open source projects. If you're creating a project, copying the project template will start you off with all the basic documentation you'll need.
Other Useful Things to Know
- Club Resources is a great place to find information about the club and different technologies we use. It also has our general coding guidelines and project template. It's open source, so feel free to add to it!
- Club Documents is where documents related to running the club are. Such as our constitution, officer duties, and proposals. Check it out if you are interested in becoming an officer.