Obviously C is not Perl.
I'm not asking for direction on this particular instance, which is why I stated my course of action with the current situation. (Though it will likely end up in some form as an XS extension at some point)
I'm asking for direction in general for contributing to OSS which has quite a bit to do with Perl. Granted in most situations, adding to someone else's work with Perl is simply a matter of using or inheriting so it often nicely sidesteps the issue.
There have often been times where I would have participated more in various capacities, if it didn't require so much effort to figure out how. Most people are more willing to help out if it's easy.
As I see it, this is a potential barrier to contribution. For instance, this is a bit different, but I think it illustrates my point well. There have been various things I've been wanting to contribute to CPAN for quite some time (years). One thing or another would hold them up. Trying to figure out how to install things in a nonstandard way, how to write tests for things like hardware. Examples were there wasn't a clear path on how to do it right. Then other more important things took precedence and they fell by the wayside (so far anyway).
For a community largely based of improving other people's work, it seems a fault that there isn't an obvious guide.
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it seems a fault that there isn't an obvious guide
That's probably because there isn't a single solution. Ways to contribute will be different for every project, and even if they are clearly advertised, contributors will choose different routes yet. There is a sort of general way to go about things in that there is usually a mailing list or email address you can use to inquire, but that's about as common as it gets.
I agree this can be frustrating and could often do with improvement. But FLOSS creation isn't a centrally managed process with a beaten path on how to do things. Think of it more like evolution, with many stops and starts and bad turns. The fight for survival often isn't pleasant for individuals (or even entire species), but it ultimately leads to the best results, because it requires constant adaptation and keeps participants flexible enough. I'm not saying this to excuse any particular project's neglect of the contribution process (in fact, how to draw in contributions may be the single most important aspect of a FLOSS project), just trying to explain the absence of obvious guides in many cases. If the author hasn't written up a guide (or even thought about it) there won't be one.
In this particular case I'd second davidrw's suggestion, give the author some time to respond. This is obviously a one-person project and it looks like his page hasn't been updated for a while, so it's possible the author has moved on to other things. In that case you could talk to this person who has apparently put out an updated xbrightness version with his own patches. Or try to contact a maintainer of an xbrightness package in an OS distribution (if such a thing should exist). Or even release the changed version of xbrightness yourself, with your changes. If you put up a page that states you'd like to merge your changes back into the original version it may happen that the original author contacts you when he gets back online back from his world-tour in a dugout.
As for CPAN, most modules have a section in the POD which tells you how to contribute. In most cases this will be the rt.cpan.org address for the module, where you can report bugs, request features and contribute patches. Other modules may have open SCM repositories which you can check out and use as the basis for your patches, if so you'll mostly also find it in the POD.
Hope this helps.
There are ten types of people: those that understand binary and those that don't.
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Good catch on the other modified version. I'll have to take a look and see how easy it is to merge the changes.
I understand that there isn't one way to do it, but I'm suprised how little I've read on the subject considering how much of my job and interests have involved OSS over the years.
I haven't given it too much thought in the past as most of my work is Perl related. It never occured to me just how much CPAN alleviates the issue in general.
I can only recall two issues were I've actually had to contact CPAN authors.
One, the author never responded. The other went ideally.
But just in the case of the GPL, considering how much software falls under it, I'm suprised there's not some guideline. Perhaps there is and I just haven't found it.
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