GnuCash is an Free Software development project and the dynamics of contributing to it is much like any other. What you contribute to it depends very much on your skill, the time you have available, and what you enjoy doing. GnuCash is looking for beta-testers, programmers, writers, question-answerers, translators and all-around nice people. Here's how you might fit in:

If you are a programmer:

Get on the gnucash-devel mailing list. Set up CVS on your machine, and check out the source code. Take a look at the build readme's in the doc subdirectory and get hacking. On the other hand, depending on your temperament, you'll probably want to discuss your hacks on the mailing list: this will avoid devolution and other unpleasentries of finding out that not everyone thinks your patch is the greatest. To get a better idea of what's going on, study the architectural overview. To get an idea of what's in store, and who's doing what, look over the projects list. Its long, but it should help orient and give an idea of the status of various components. Last, but hardly least, you should go over the existing documentation in the subdirectory src/doc in the source tree.

If you are a translator:

All of the menus and dialogues in GnuCash are fully internationalized/localized using the GNU gettext tools. Chances are good that you've already configured your machine correctly for your locale, and therefore, chances are reasonable that you're already seeing GnuCash in your native language, with correctly localized dates and currencies. If not, either there's a bug, your machine is misconfigured, or your native language is not Danish, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian or Swedish.

This does not mean that the translation is perfect: if the wrong phrase or word is used in menus or dialogues, you should contact the maintainer for your language (see the README file for credits). If the wrong currency is displayed, or there are other localization problems, you should contact the gnucash-devel mailing list. Note that the input methods for Asian (Japanese, Chinese, etc.) and right-to-left languages are partially broken: we are looking for programmers who are knowledgeable enough to fix in input method problems in the gnome input widgets that we use. Also: I'd personally like an 'Asian-howto' written in English so that I (actually, we, the English-speaking developers) could set up our boxes here for a demo. Write source code, review the file README.translator.txt, and then look at the translation file in the po directory.

We also need non-English translations of the website. If you've got one of these, write webmaster at gnucash.org. Non-English translations of the documentation are also needed. The sticky part is, of course, that the documentation is quite rough, and is currently being re-written. If you are a great writer, contact us.

If you are a fan but have few programming talents:

There are many novice and intermediate users of GnuCash who need occasional help using GnuCash. Hang out on the gnucash-user mailing list, and help answer questions, or at least guide the discussion there. If you have formal training in accounting, or considerable experience in finance, and you want to help the developers implement the features correctly, then you should join the rather technical discussions that occur on gnucash-devel. Courageous beta-testers are always needed for the latest version. That's because the latest version is frequently broken, and we need someone to tell us where the bugs are. If you are an artist: well, a new logo, a better icon, more graphics: these things sure don't hurt. If you like to promote free software projects, write to us: we like promoters.

If you are a webmaster:

We'd like somebody to help set up and maintain all those neat development tools that a 'real' project should have, such as lxr and bonsai, and maybe a bug-tracking tool, or other bits & pieces. We even need someone to make sure that the mail archives are running correctly, and that recent mail is getting indexed & is searchable.

If you are a writer/reporter:

The documentation needs an overhaul. Some people may think that accounting is boring, but that doesn't mean that the documentation should put you to sleep. And having the latest in financial news, creating something along the lines of advogato for financial topics, might not be a bad idea.