Let us know how you contribute to the free software movement. If you contribute in multiple ways just let us know the primary way or choose other and comment.

I do all of these things, but would like to emphasized monetary donations to F/OSS, as it is really easy for anyone to do & even small sums make developers happy.

All of us, who are attempting to learn the 'nuts and bolts' of FS, are part of the contribution, too. As soon as we learn enough, our contributions will start to become useful in one way or another.

Online publications, like Free Software Magazine, are a valuable aid for those who are trying to learn.

I've translated a few short pieces of Free software into Spanish. I can't really write code, but I want to return as much as I want to the free software movement.

i consider "writing patches" separate from "writing code". my patches have never garnered me the title "contributor" or "team member" on a software application's website, so i think the community would also agree that there is a difference between "code" and "patches".

my patches primarily address bugs that i've discovered (accompanying a bug report) or that i've encountered and the first to solve, though i've addressed "new functionality" a time or two.

with a job and family i really don't have the time to do more than "write patches".

i also try to help users out when i know something they want/need to know with detailed mailing list posts or website comments.

that's my small contribution to foss.

The hard thing is deciding which thing that I do has the most impact. Is it more important that I write documentation, promote the ideas behind free software in my writing, or that I actually write some free software?

I don't write a large volume of stuff myself, but I do practice what I preach. And I think maybe that's why I had to pick "write software" on this list. It's not what I do most, but it may be what I do that's most important.

I think that, aside from the obvious benefits of growing the pool of software that is available and solving specific technical problems, it also gives you an important perspective on the ethical, pragmatic, and economic aspects that surround software. We have a lot of funny ideas pushed on to us by various special interests, and the only way to get a feel for how things really work is to try it yourself.

I don't write free software out of some kind of martyr complex, I do it because it's fun, and for me, it's the most practical way to get what I want done ("If you want it done right...").

I also picked it because it's what I did today! Voila, fresh out of the oven:

Palimpsest 0.1-alpha (Release Notes).

"The purpose of Palimpsest is to unify access to metadata (especially attribution and licensing data) in a range of multimedia files. It implements a plugin scheme for fully-supporting native metadata in specific filetypes, as well as an XMP scanner for unrecognized files."

It's only a week since I started writing it, so it's still pretty primitive, but I plan to extend it considerably. I'll probably write a blog about it when it actually supports more than GIF files (don't ask me why I started with GIF, it wasn't exactly a rational decision, it just sort of happened -- PNG and JPG are coming soon, then probably SVG and Ogg Vorbis, as well as about 3 more abstraction layers in the interface which will make it a lot more useful).

I do all of the above. But my primary and biggest F/OSS activity is advocacy. I did hundreds of installations for anybody who asks me for it in the past 10 years.

I am an associate member of FSF (member no. 3822) for the past two years. In this way I make monetory contributions to the Free software movement.

I hope we keep it like that..

-gerel

I meet with politicians and tell them why our laws should protect software users, developers, and distributors against software patents. I also tell them how to do this since the mechanics of making the correct change in the law is usually obfuscated within some other more laudable change.

GPLv3 - strengthening free software

In the end I had to decide that financial support of the Free Software Foundation is the most important/primary. If it wasn't for FSF the poll wouldn't even be relevant.

I selected "other" because I write and distribute free software, advocate and teach it and also have contributed documentation.

Okay not everyone can (or should) code and it's good that a lot of people advocate but right now what concerns me is the low number of people contributing documentation. I think this is one of the great plus points of the free software world. The fact that you and I can join in by writing HOWTOs, guides and general tips means we can all take part without actually having to write code.

I suspect that more people contribute than this poll indicates though because at first I thought it meant writing help files and the like for specific packages. Of course it can also mean writing helpful webpages, posting HOWTOs to TLDP, contributing to WIKIs etc. All of this is documentation - especially because the nature of software documentation has changed. Yes I still read books but increasingly the "documentation" I use includes bits gleaned from forums, mailing lists and other websites.

The largest part of my contribution to free software is translation into Slovenian language (my main work is on KDE). I also try to regularly test beta releases of various GNU/Linux distributions and report bugs that I found. I also do a lot of work by telling people about free software. I'm using my blog for this and submit links to Digg, Stumble Upon, del.icio.us and reddit. Telling people I meet in real life or online about free software is also a thing I often do. I've also started to work on learning how to program in C++/Qt so that I will some day be able to help even with programming.

My small business is based on Open Source / Free software. I provide solutions based on Linux / free software. I encourage my clients to buy a box set, and exlpain to them that it is simply a nice gsture to the developers and that there are no strings attached and that they can install it on as many machines as they want etc. I aslo make it a point of buying almost evry box set of my favourite distro.