Repository

https://github.com/OpenShot/openshot-qt

Introduction

I believe that, if you are following the series, you are already familiar with Openshot. I hope that, if you are following this series, you have given a chance to the program. Just by downloading and using it you are already actively helping the developers.

Open source projects are made to be used. Though, giving back to the developers of the program is always something that is appreciated, it is not required, else it would be a paid, or even a "freemium" software (freemium means that it is free, but there is a "catch", like ads or data mining or paid features).

But, in case you feel like you want to, and you can, do something more to help the team behind the software, I will introduce in this post a few ways how you can help the project.

The same way you don't need to get involved in some way to use the program if you are not a user of the program, yet, but want to get involved in some open source project, you can also consider following the tips given here.

Remember, Openshot is a free and competitive open source project. It gives the big and paid ones a run for their money. By using and helping its community you are contributing to making the competition healthier. Though the team is efficient and has done great things, help is always welcome. Better open source projects make a healthier software market because the expensive ones will have to justify their price with speed and more features. It is a win-win situation, both for open source and proprietary users.

What is Openshot

If you are not following the series, Openshot is a free and open source video editor that, competes for head to head with well established paid video editing software, as demonstrated in other posts of this series. It suits well both amateur and professional video editors, for a few similar and a few different reasons.

Reasons for it to fit well both:

• It is free, everyone can benefit from good free products
• It is open source, so it has updates and bug fixes from a huge community that is not driven by "making more money by spending less"

Reasons why Openshot fits well amateurs:

• The interface is simple and intuitive
• There are cool effects available right from the starting workspace, making it intuitive and simple to use them
• Though it is simple to use, if you find any difficulty, there is a big community out there to help you, with lots of tutorials and documentation to help you out

Reasons why Openshot fits well professionals:

• The performance is top notch, opens fast and the preview window never lagged on my (personal experience)
• It has an Amazon AWS plugin that allows you to render your projects on the Amazon cloud. Of course, that has a price for renting their servers, but depending on how much time you spend rendering, the difference of the paid software you use to the Amazon servers might even mean profit!

Help with code

I will start with the most specialized way how you can help the project, and then work our way down to the less specialized way. Feel free to skip the sections you don't think you are comfortable with. I understand not everyone can code. And by that I mean, people that don't know how to code and can't help in any way, and people that know how to code, but does not have time to help, so also can not code!

There is a page on the Github of the project dedicated to teaching how can you help with coding.

The steps described are simple and intuitive (to anyone experienced with Github):

• Open a new GitHub pull request with the patch.
• Ensure the PR description clearly describes the problem and solution. Include the relevant issue number if applicable.
• Before submitting, please ensure your PR passes all build / compilation / and unit tests.

Help with bugs

If you know how to code, you might submit better bug reports, but to help with this, you don't need to know a single bit of code!

On the project's GitHub page for issues you can report bugs and issues you find while using the program. On the page from the previous project they also introduced how can you help with bug reporting, so, if you can read that page before submitting an issue on Github, that would be helpful for them and you.

The first thing they ask you to do is to, please, search if the bug you want to report has been reported before, to avoid repetition. Though there are many volunteers helping with the project, the less duplicate issues the better, so the developers can focus on real, new and unique bugs.

They also ask you to attach the logs of your program, so they can see what happened during and before the bug.

Also related to code, but on the bug section. If you want to help with coding, but don't know any feature you would like to introduce or don't really. know how to get started and what to code first, the issues page might be a great start. On the issues page, you can find the bugs other people have reported, and if you have an idea on how to fix them, either comment or code the fix yourself. The team surely appreciate you relieving them from some of the work they have to do because everyone there is a volunteer and can not give 100% of their daily time to the project.

Help by donating

Jonathan Thomas has started this project alone, all by himself, though, nowadays he has help from many people. Openshot is free, but they have costs for running their servers. If you can't (for whatever reason) or just "don't feel like it" in helping on other categories, you can simply donate to help keep them running. It takes little time, and if the software helped you save money, then what are a few bucks for hundreds of saving dollars?

Their website has a section dedicated exclusively to showing how can people donate to keep the project running.

Their payment options are:

• Paypal donation (one time only)
• Paypal subscription (monthly recurring)
• Bitcoin (temporarily unavailable)
• Patreon (monthly recurring)

By their Patreon page it does not seem like there are many users helping with donations:

Only 31 people are helping with a total of fewer than 100 dollars a month, which makes less than 4 dollars per person a month. While that is something, it makes me a bit sad to see such a small number. But, of course, people maybe realize that Patreon takes a fat cut off of the donations for the creator, so, there is a chance that donations are much bigger, but we can't see it.

We could possibly see the Bitcoin donations, to see how well is the project going financially, but at the moment the page for Bitcoin donations is offline:

Temporary unavailable method

Another way of helping the project could be by helping people on the Openshot forums, but, their forum is down and I don't know for how long already and for how long will it stay like that. I hope that this is not a reflection of low donations making it difficult to keep the servers (wow, Igor, I didn't know I was that pessimist)

If the forums come back online, you can go there and help by just talking about the product, sharing your experiences, sharing what you have learned, and teaching new users.

Another way

There is another way you can help a lot the project, and I think you might suspect what that is.

By posting on social media about the project, you are helping spread the word. Of course, the project does not seek profit and won't make any more or any less money by having more users. But giving visibility and onboarding users is the most motivating thing an open source developer can see, possibly more satisfying than receiving a big donation.

If you can share about the project or report your experience with it online (like I am doing right now!), you are already doing a lot!

Every bit counts

So, I have tried to rank the sections with the different ways you can help, from what I think is the most specialized help (means, probably fewer people can do), to the less specialized help (possibly anyone can do). But that does not mean, in any extent, that the people that help with the suggestion from the first section are more important than those who follow the last section.

Openshot is an open source project. They aren't seeking to make billions or to be the most used video editor in the world (that would be cool though), and anything you do, even just using the software, is already something and has its value for helping the project!

Resources

Openshot main website
https://www.openshot.org/

Download page
https://www.openshot.org/download/

Use guide
https://www.openshot.org/static/files/user-guide/index.html

Series backlinks

• Openshot Series - An Outlook On Performance And Speed(Part 6)
• Openshot Series - It Gives You The Freedom To Fail, And That Is Awesome(Part 5)
• Openshot Series - For Professionals: Time Is Money(Part 4)
• Openshot Series - The Alternatives, Paid And Open Source Competitors(Part 3)
• Openshot Series - First Person Workflow (Part 2)
• Openshot Series - Introduction To Openshot Video Editor And My Experience (Part 1)

Beneficiaries

This post has as beneficiaries

• @utopian.pay with 5%
• @steempeak with 1%

using the SteemPeak beneficiary tool