History of FOSS at RIT

Historical Contribution

I did my contribution for the same community, the FOSSRIT website, and more of the community was involved in this process compared to before.

I decided the issue to pick based on the critique I got before about removing history from the Open@RIT tab on the website. I also took this opportunity to fully resolve the issue I was attempting to solve in my prior pull request, Issue #188.

This was similiar to my bug fix due to the fact that my initial bug fix was an attempt to fix the issue, as well as add documentation and update some of the content on the website. However, one aspect that was different was that I was making a whole new page from scratch, so I had to change more config files and add a lot more content that had to be fact checked.

The first step I took to pursue my idea of adding a history page to the website was to talk to others in the community about the history of Open Source at Rochester Institute of Technology. After taking notes of everything they had said, I also addressed old existing articles that mentioned some of the events that took place over the years. An example of one of those articles is the annoucement for the FOSS Program!

When I did all that, I summarized and took as much information that many sources had said to ensure it was credible. My strategy going into this was to categorize the history in groups based on the organizations that served as the hub for Open Source on the campus over the years.

What blocked me heavily was that I did not take much time in spell-checking as well as a huge mis-understanding I had picked up in my research which was that FOSS@RIT and FOSSBox were actually just one organization to some eyes. What helped me cross this hurdle was the community coming out of the woodworks to ensure all my information was credible and lend their fresh set of eyes to read the contents of the history passage to locate any errors. For that, I am very grateful to the assistance that both Justin Flory and Adrian Edwards provided.

As of writing this blog post, my pull request is still underway. However, the outlook of the contribution being accepted is good due to two reviewers aproving the changes.