POST: Learning Git to Share More Free Stuff

Jessamyn West (Open Library) wrote a post that eloquently explains git, GitHub, and how they empower users to work on open source projects:

In the past we’ve always said that Open Source was great because if you didn’t like something you could change it. However it’s only been recently that the tools to do this sort of thing have become graspable by the average non-coder. I am not a coder… So, I “forked” this code (i.e. got my own copy) and opened it up to see if I could see where it was doing its thing and if I could change it to make it do something slightly different.

West demonstrates forking code from flickr-cc to create flickr-free, a project she released that queries Flickr for free images. Flickr-free is available on her website, librarian.net.

dh+lib Review

This post was produced through a cooperation between Laura Braunstein, Joseph Grobelny, Lydia Herring-Harrington, Bobby Smiley, Jolanda-Pieta van Arnhem, and Amy Wickner. (Editors-at-large for the week), Caro Pinto (Editor for the week), Sarah Potvin (Site Editor), Caitlin Christian-Lamb, Roxanne Shirazi, and Patrick Williams (dh+lib Review Editors).