Ask HN: How did you get involved in open source? I've been wanting to get more involved in the open source community but always found it difficult to find time / motivation. I am keen to hear how other people got involved in it! |
Ask HN: How did you get involved in open source? I've been wanting to get more involved in the open source community but always found it difficult to find time / motivation. I am keen to hear how other people got involved in it! |
I actually got involved in open source in hacktoberfest 2016 a little over a year actually. Contributing to Open Source is pretty simple nowadays. Here's what I did
1. Find an OSS that you use, that is simple enough that you can contribute to and uses the tech stack that you are most familiar with. 2. Each project would have a Newcomers section or atleast a Readme, read that and set up the development environment and compile the latest build. 3. Go to the respective bug tracker and find bugs tagged newcomers, beginners e.t.c and find one that is recent and unassigned. 4. Show your interest in contributing and fixing the bug, and state explicitly that you are a beginner and this is your first OSS contribution. 5. While waiting for someone to reply try to solve the bug on your own. The code base would be intimidating but give it time. 6. If you get stuck, ask for help in the respective IRC Channels or Slack group of the project. 7. If you manage to fix it, send a pull request and make everyone Happy.
This is just an highlevel overview of the steps required. Cheers