Opensource / Public Contributions

[el1t3st]

I'm a software engineer by trade (12 years going strong, e.g I'm versed in NodeJS / C# for back end tech, and a lot of the other JS Frameworks mainly React + Angular.)... but not skilled in the same tech DumaOS is written in (I'm assuming C++ and, I can see the UI is built in Polymer)

Is there any way the community can contribute to the OS. I feel some concepts of polymer for example aren't unique to polymer... and for me to be able to do minor entry level tasks in it would be a fun way to learn some other tech.

The reason I'm asking, is I believe we could assist with things like adding smaller features / fixing smaller issues. Again, for me specifically more VPN providers would be great...  

Would there ever be a time when you guys at Netduma would accept contributions from the community (obviously Netduma would need to vigorously screen the PR before merging)... but I'm happy to do some grunt work if it makes my life (and other peoples) easier in the long run.

[Netduma Iain]

That's awesome! Thanks for getting in touch It's potentially interesting. Let me just state the downsides I envision upfront so we can explore the idea. If we were to do this then the concerns would be:

• Code would have to be reviewed and meet our internal standards. If this isn't too time consuming for us and the contributor doesn't mind (i.e. don't take it personally if we don't accept a contribution) it sounds exciting
• We cannot give people access to key parts of our codebase without a stringent contract. Although front-end I'm less concerned about.
• You'd have to assign copyright to us or at least give an acceptable licence for your contributions. I.e. if you stopped working on it we must be allowed to continue working on it and your contributions do not impact any other parts of the codebase and other obvious legal concerns. 

What do you think about that?

Also it's worth mentioning we'll soon be open to allow 3rd party developers to develop RApps for DumaOS using our extensive SDK. 

[el1t3st]

@Netduma Iain
Of course... these are routers that would need to eventually be distributed to potentially 100s of thousands of households... I'd not expect anything less... ultimately Netduma carries the responsibility of the software going out, so it cant be a free for all.

I was mainly thinking for example to somehow extend the HybridVPN interface to allow importing of OVPN files (vs having to copy and paste the file content into that text block)... or having the VPN login details persist between editing them, or the modals resizing properly etc... you know not major things... but just minor interface annoyances. If this can be solved by 3rd party RApps... then all of the above will be moot...

Maybe a suggestion though... when 3rd party RApps become possible...

1. will there be sample apps available somewhere to get to grips with it...
2. and maybe another thought added to that... could we base 3rd part RApps off of internal RApps?
   • ..again I'm requesting this with the idea in mind of extending the hybrid VPN interface

 

[Netduma Iain]

We're very busy at the moment so we wouldn't have time to develop sample Rapps, although that is a great idea and we'd like to do that soon. What you could develop would probably be more of a legal/business issue, however we'll be quite liberal on that front.

We'd definitely be interested in you contributing to improve the hybrid VPN Rapp. Are you available for a call in the next week with members of our dev team? We're based in the UK for timezone planning.