There are some big names in the GNOME community: those are the names we can find in a lot of quotes in Jeff's email signatures. And you would believe it's hard to get quoted in such a mail. But no, it's not. Everybody can join the GNOME Team and make a difference.

Today, I'm looking for one or two people (maybe more?) who want to make a difference by writing some code. If you dream in C, then you're a good candidate (writing C instead of dreaming in C would qualify too). But if you hate C, come too, my friend, because python is also a great and easy-to-learn language.

Today, I'm looking for co-maintainers for gnome-panel (written in C) and for pessulus (written in python). However, there is an important restriction, an unusual restriction: I'd like the people wanting to co-maintain those modules to not be maintainer of another module. I've been told that fresh new blood tastes better ;-)

The path to co-maintainership is not as long as you would imagine. You can do it. You only have to start contributing and to keep contributing for some time. If you're interested in this, feel free to contact me or to take a look at gnome-panel and pessulus bugs. Pessulus is really easy to start with, and there are also some (many?) not-so-hard gnome-panel tasks.

But don't forget: you can make a difference without writing any code too!