mrtg-contrib(1)
NAME
mrtg-contrib - Contribution Guidelines for MRTG
DESCRIPTION
If you have written an extension to mrtg or created a bug fix, please
consider contributing it to the project. As I get quite a number of
contributions every week, here are a few guidelines which explain how
to contribute so that I can use the contribution without too much
additional work.
Translations
MRTG messages have been translated to a number of languages but there
are still many which have not been covered yet. If you want to add
yours, go into the mrtg-2.17.4/translate directory and follow the
instructions given in the README file.
Patches
When you have created your modification or extension to mrtg and want
to submit it to me, please crate a patch for the files which you have
modified. Do not send entire files unless they are new.
To create a patch, get hold of a copy of GNU diff (Many Unix systems
will have this installed already. In the NT world you might want to get
http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/ to get all the nice GNU tools
available.) and type
diff --unified --ignore-space-change old-file new-file > simple.patch
or if you have modified several files do
diff --recursive --unified --ignore-space-change old-dir/ new-dir/ >long.patch
Documentation
All documentation of mrtg is done with the perl POD system. If you want
to learn about it, type
perldoc perlpod
and read the instructions. If you have bugfixes or additions to the
existing documents, make sure you modify the POD files and not the html
or txt versions.
I take documentation very seriously. Whenever you create a new feature
for mrtg which you want to get included in the official release, your
patch must also contain modifications for the relevant pod file in the
doc tree or for the documentation sections of cfgmaker and indexmaker.
ADDRESS
Send your patches, translations and contributions to Tobias Oetiker <tobi@oetiker.ch>
AUTHOR
Tobias Oetiker <tobi@oetiker.ch>
Opportunity
Personal Opportunity - Free software gives you access to billions of dollars of software at no cost. Use this software for your business, personal use or to develop a profitable skill. Access to source code provides access to a level of capabilities/information that companies protect though copyrights. Open source is a core component of the Internet and it is available to you. Leverage the billions of dollars in resources and capabilities to build a career, establish a business or change the world. The potential is endless for those who understand the opportunity.
Business Opportunity - Goldman Sachs, IBM and countless large corporations are leveraging open source to reduce costs, develop products and increase their bottom lines. Learn what these companies know about open source and how open source can give you the advantage.
Free Software
Free Software provides computer programs and capabilities at no cost but more importantly, it provides the freedom to run, edit, contribute to, and share the software. The importance of free software is a matter of access, not price. Software at no cost is a benefit but ownership rights to the software and source code is far more significant.
Free Office Software - The Libre Office suite provides top desktop productivity tools for free. This includes, a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation engine, drawing and flowcharting, database and math applications. Libre Office is available for Linux or Windows.
Free Books
The Free Books Library is a collection of thousands of the most popular public domain books in an online readable format. The collection includes great classical literature and more recent works where the U.S. copyright has expired. These books are yours to read and use without restrictions.
Source Code - Want to change a program or know how it works? Open Source provides the source code for its programs so that anyone can use, modify or learn how to write those programs themselves. Visit the GNU source code repositories to download the source.
Education
Study at Harvard, Stanford or MIT - Open edX provides free online courses from Harvard, MIT, Columbia, UC Berkeley and other top Universities. Hundreds of courses for almost all major subjects and course levels. Open edx also offers some paid courses and selected certifications.
Linux Manual Pages - A man or manual page is a form of software documentation found on Linux/Unix operating systems. Topics covered include computer programs (including library and system calls), formal standards and conventions, and even abstract concepts.
