Work with us
Contributors · unpaid, and explained below
LGM-OS is written by one person. It works, it sells and it gets updates, but there is more to do than there are hands to do it. If you fancy pitching in, here is the deal.
First things first, because this is what matters
I cannot pay you today. That is not a turn of phrase or a "we'll see": the project does not yet earn enough to pay anyone, and I would rather say so in the first line than let it slip out in the third conversation.
If it ever earns enough to pay, it will — and whoever is on board will hear it first. But sign up only if it is worth it to you exactly as it stands today: no salary, no promised stake, no timeline.
What is needed
You do not have to be a programmer. These are the things genuinely holding the project back, in order of how much they would help:
- Testing it on odd hardware. The most useful and the least glamorous. An old machine, a strange controller, a 2012 laptop: every install that fails somewhere new fixes the installer for everybody.
- Telling me what makes no sense. If you open a screen and do not know what to do, that is the product's fault, not yours. And it is a fault I can no longer see, because I wrote it.
- Documentation. Guides, screenshots, a five-minute video showing how something is set up. Whatever took you a while to work out, written down for the next person.
- App recipes. If you use something that ought to be in the Package Center, a
well-made
docker-composefor it is an afternoon of yours and a new feature for everyone. - Code. Python (FastAPI) on the server, React and TypeScript in the panel, bash in the installer. This one needs a conversation first: the code of everything that runs on the NAS ships in full with every release and on every box, but the repository with its history is not public, so we need to agree how we work on it.
What you get
Said plainly, since the part above was too:
- A lifetime licence for LGM-OS, and another one to give away.
- Your name in the product credits and in the release notes for anything of yours that went in — if you want it there.
- Real work you can point at. This is not a toy project: these are real NAS boxes in real homes, holding data people care about.
- Being listened to. There is no committee. If you propose something good, it goes in.
What you contribute
Before anything of yours goes in —code, text, recipes, screenshots— we sign a short written agreement: you remain its author, and you give permission to use, change and distribute it as part of LGM-OS, paid versions included. Without that in writing, the law does not let it go into a product that is sold.
Contributing is voluntary: no schedule, no compulsory tasks and no employment relationship. You stop whenever you like, and nobody owes anybody hours.
How to sign up
By direct message on Discord. Join the community and send me a DM. No CV, no cover letter: three lines will do.
Tell me, if you can:
- What you would like to do from the list above (or what you have in mind yourself).
- How much time you feel like giving it, even if it is "the odd hour now and then". The odd hour counts.
- What hardware you have, if testing is your thing.
You will get a reply from me, not from a form.
And if the project stops
A fair question, especially if you are going to spend your time on it: if I stop maintaining LGM-OS, the source goes public on GitHub and the product stops asking for a licence. What you build does not die with me. The whole thing, including how to verify it, is in If LGM-OS disappears.