Get Involved - apache/ctakes GitHub Wiki

You don't need to be a software developer to contribute to Apache cTAKES. To be successful this project requires a range of different skills, levels of involvement and degrees of technical expertise. So, if you want to get involved in cTAKES, there is almost certainly a role for you.

We are looking for people to:

• Provide general feedback
• Ask and answer questions on mailing lists
• Write or update documentation
• Help new users
• Test the code and report bugs
• Fix bugs
• Provide feedback on required features
• Develop new features
• Develop utility tools
• Update the software to standards
• Provide example clinical notes
• Annotate example clinical notes
• Create artwork
• Recommend the project to others
• Anything you can see that needs doing

All of these contributions help to keep a project active and strengthen the community. The project team and the broader community will therefore welcome and encourage participation, and attempt to make it as easy as possible for people to get involved. Apache defines it this way.

Your first engagement with the project would probably be to subscribe to our mailing lists and to try out cTAKES as a user. If this fits the bill or you see something you'd like to improve then possibly modify code or make other enhancements. After working with the community for a little bit you will be recognized as someone who should have write access. Being a committee member may be in your future.

The most important thing about engaging with any Apache project is that everyone is equal. All people with an opinion are entitled to express that opinion and, where appropriate, have it considered by the community.

To some the idea of having to establish consensus in a large and distributed team sounds inefficient and frustrating. Don't despair though, The Apache Way has a set of simple processes to ensure things proceed at a good pace.