I think this 4 words can resume pretty much what’s FOSS about. A couple of months ago I had a small shutdown from linux communities since *real life* was going on, and with some friends help, I tried to figure out *why* we do what we do. Talking and giving a meaning to every action we take on this online world this 4 words got to resume everything. Why?:

Learn:

There is NO WAY you can be on ANY FOSS community or group if you are not willing to learn. Life itself is a learning journey that will take you to unknown places where you might get amazed. Some people join FOSS communities thinking that know everything, but soon they realize that there is no way you can know everything, and you will always learn something new, just need to keep your mind open :)

Teach:

Be a FOSS contributor is be a student and a teacher. Open Source way teach us that what we learn must be teach because you don’t know where is that next contributor that might change the source code of your world. Teach however isn’t easy. You must be patient, perseverant and if non of those work… friendly to send them to other teacher. We never say no, there is always an answer for everything.

Help:

Help people is what we do. We get up everyday and turn on our pc (some just never go off) and try to make someone life easier, either with code, design or translations, each one of us help everyday to make Open Source better. If you’re not a *people person* you can always help doing something else. I’m sure people will apreciate.

Enjoy:

At the end.. you will make friends, will find people to chat every single day, you will be able to learn different languages and maybe travel to other countries. You will find a new image that bring a smile to your face or a code line that will make you breath. Every day FOSS makes people life easier and our goal as contributors is enjoy this process. Is everything perfect? No, but like life, every single day counts.

What are you waiting to join a FOSS community? There are a lot of places where you can make a difference… just give yourself a chance :) Now… help me to spread some love! (click on each to get a full size or multiple sizes.)

and some banners :) (right click to save banner images.)