Open source club

[Vijay Kailas <tw...@gmail.com>]

Hi, I am writing to inform you of a new open source club that is starting at 
the University of Maryland. It will be mainly concerned with exposing 
students to open source, advertising open source software around the campus, 
and encouraging them to join projects or start their own. This club is NOT 
requesting that undergraduate student be developers in your open source 
project. It is instead offering college student time to contribute in any 
way you see fit to the project. Students can contribute in their own way, 
adding to documentation, maintaining out of date documentation, testing 
software, commenting code, advertising to increase your projects visibility 
at their school, reduce project developers work load by handling menial 
tasks, researching topics, or provide feedback from other students 
concerning ease of use and user interface. Most project members are so 
overloaded with work they have little time to supervise and undergraduate 
student. This club hopes to facilitate the management of students by 
aggregating them into groups and developing peer review systems. Students 
can work on isolatable tasks or modular pieces of code. Peer review by other 
students will help make sure a task is performed correctly. 

Before you dismiss the program as another distraction, think of the long 
term benefits your project will have from involvement in universities. Think 
of this program as almost free labor from fresh minds with a genuine 
interest and at least 12 years of general schooling. Student's involvement 
will lead to better documented software, better commented code, more 
visibility in college campuses, potential recruits after graduating, better 
use of collaboration to handle menial tasks, faster bug fixes, and happier 
end users. University students have at there disposable a wide variety or 
resources to draw upon such as teachers, libraries, peers, computer labs, 
and lot's free time. Students could also help fill help channels for the 
project, providing online support for users in their spare time. 

The club is going to start out simple at first with a few projects and will 
expand as interest develops. If you are interested in further information, 
please respond. If this email was not sent to the correct contact in your 
project, I apologize. Please forward this email to the appropriate channels.

Thanks,

Vijay Kailas