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Contribute to Collapse OS
Thanks for considering participating to Collapse OS. That the idea of a post-collapse operating system sparks your interest is great. However, there have been many contributors so far who seem to have misunderstood Collapse OS' manifesto. To be clear, let's review its most important points.
Project goal
Collapse OS' only goal is to preserve humanity's ability to program microcontrollers with low-tech tools. We accept only contributions advancing the project towards that goal.
Although Collapse OS is mostly a software product, it's also a documentation repository. Improving documentation and recipes make the project advance towards its goal.
That Collapse OS has such a narrow goal might disappoint many people who are enthusiastic about the technological achievement. Sorry for that.
If you think that Collapse OS could be repurposed, please fork it. If it serves the general purpose of post-collapse resilience, that project could be part of a web of resilience which we'll end up building.
Priorities and tradeoffs
It is very important for Collapse OS to be self-contained, that is, usable and hackable with no external ressources. Because of that, code simplicity is paramount.
It is also important for Collapse OS to run on very tight ressources. Because of that, code compactness trumps efficiency or features.
All of this means that simplicity is more important than compactness which is more important than efficiency.
That being said, common sense still prevails. In a critical loop, we will of course favor efficiency.
Serious
This project is not made with irony. When being faced with existential threat, irony offers us a lot of comfort, but this project is not meant to supply this. It's self evident that this project is a rich source of possible ironic pleasure. To that end, I suggest a fork. Maybe call it "Pip Boy 3000"?
Roadmap rigidity
This project has a roadmap. It says it's rigid, but that doesn't mean it's immutable. If you have a good idea that isn't on the roadmap, please share it.
Skill requirements
As the roadmap page says, participation to this project requires a certain set of skills, which is true. Authors of this project don't mind helping you out honing your skills with code reviews, but please don't expect hand holding.
Important note: the documentation in this project is lacking in many ways. If you have problem understanding how Collapse OS work because documentation is lacking, please seek "hand holding". This way, we can improve the documentation and make post-collapse users much happier.
It is frequently asked by would-be contributors whether I have tips for an optimal ramping up of skills. I've put together a little document to answer that question.