Created
January 18, 2017 14:22
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Suggestions on how to start contributing to Open Source Projects.
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| Why should I contribute? | |
| Students gain: | |
| - skills | |
| - real world experience | |
| - understanding of programming disciplines and best practices | |
| - contacts | |
| - exposure | |
| organizations gain: | |
| - new contributions & contributors | |
| - increase in community strength | |
| - publicity | |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| Community meaning: | |
| - A group of people having a religion, race, profession or other particular characteristic in common | |
| - A feeling of fellowshi with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. | |
| The Community | |
| Projects often have a community around them, made up of other users in different (formal or informal) roles: | |
| Owner - is the user or organization that created the project has the project on their account. | |
| Maintainers and Collaborators - are the users primarily doing the work on a project and driving the direction. Oftentimes the owner and the maintainer are the same. They have write access to the repository. | |
| Contributors - is everyone who has had a pull request merged into a project. | |
| Community Members - are the users who often use and care deeply about the project and are active in discussions for features and pull requests. | |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| Getting Started:- | |
| Wander about, play around, experiment, get involved in conversations, find your groove and locate your perfect match. | |
| 1. Choose a stream / language of your choice absed upon what interests you the most. | |
| 2. Search for a project that you are interested based upon the stream / language of your choice. There are a ton of ways to find things to work upon:- | |
| - https://openhatch.org/ - OpenHatch is a non-profit dedicated to matching prospective free software contributors with communities, tools, and education. | |
| - http://up-for-grabs.net/ - Explore open source projects and jump in! | |
| 3. Starts with bug fixes if you are a programmer. | |
| - Find easy/mentored/first bugs [This one is the hard part, i'll come to it later] | |
| - Bugs don't always mean programming. Bugs might also be community to-do, artworks, etc. | |
| - Learn a version control system, understand the difference between Git & GitHub. | |
| 4. Fix these and submit a PR. Here are some Pull Request Pro Tips:- | |
| - Fork | |
| - Create a branch | |
| - Be clear | |
| - It’s best to test | |
| - Include screenshots | |
| - Contribute in the style of the project | |
| 5. Find an issue and report it. Here are some Issues Pro Tips:- | |
| - Check existing issues | |
| - Be clear | |
| - Link to demos | |
| - Include system details | |
| - Paste error output | |
| 6. Voila! You just got started! :-) | |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| REDHAT Communities | |
| - Fedora: is a fast, stable, and powerful operating system for everyday use, built by a worldwide community. It's completely free to use, study, and share. | |
| - RDO: is a community of people using and deploying OpenStack® on Red Hat® Enterprise Linux®, Fedora, and distributions derived from these (such as CentOS, Scientific Linux, and others). | |
| - JBoss Developer: Community-driven projects featuring the latest innovations for cutting-edge apps. Our flagship project, JBoss® AS, is the leading open source, standards-compliant, Java™ EE-based application server implemented in 100% Pure Java. | |
| - Red Hat Developers: Built for developers, by developers—Red Hat® Developers provides access to tools, guides, downloads, and contributions to make your job and daily work easier. [https://www.redhat.com/en/developers] | |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| Some Open Source Communities:- | |
| - Mozilla: Getting started with Mozilla is damn simple. Mozilla has multiple gateway for their fellow new contributors. | |
| 1. What can I do for mozilla? [http://whatcanidoformozilla.org/] | |
| This site suggests you project based on the programming skill you select. Once you decide you project it takes you to the respective mozilla project. | |
| 2. Bugs Ahoy! [http://www.joshmatthews.net/bugsahoy/] | |
| Bugs Ahoy is a site particularly for the new contributors. The website categorizes the 'Easy bugs' and 'Mentored Bugs' based on the various project like JS Engine, Devtools, Firefox OS etc. | |
| Bugs Ahoy categorizes the easy bugs based on the programming languages too primarily Python, Java, Shell, JS, C/C++, | |
| - Fedora: | |
| 1. Fedora Easy Fix page list down all the easy fixes you can get started with. Each project lists down whom you need to contact and the maintainer of the project. | |
| 2. Fedora Infrastructure respositories contain some easy fixes. Look for the EasyFix label in the repository issues section. Fedora Infrastructure | |
| - KDE: If you want to start contributing to KDE, look out for the Junior Jobs tag. Like each organization KDE too contains a section on how to get started with the KDE projects. | |
| 1. KDE Community Wiki: https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved | |
| - OpenStack: OpenStack is also a great project to start with. The OpenStack project is divided into various components: Swift, Glance, Nova, Horizon, Keystone etc. Each of these components have their own page. | |
| 1. Contribution Wiki: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/How_To_Contribute | |
| 2. Low Hanging Fruits: OpenStack calls their beginner bugs as "Low Hanging Fruit". [https://bugs.launchpad.net/openstack/+bugs?field.tag=low-hanging-fruit] | |
| - Wikipedia: Contibute to MediaWiki | |
| 1. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Gerrit/Getting_started | |
| 2. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker | |
| - Python | |
| 1. Developer's Guide: http://docs.python.org/devguide/ | |
| 2. Bug Tracker: http://bugs.python.org/ | |
| - GNOME: https://wiki.gnome.org/NewcomersTutorial | |
| - Apache: http://community.apache.org/newcomers/index.html | |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| Communication Channels most commonly used in OSS Communities:- | |
| - Mailing Lists | |
| - Mailman | |
| - Google Groups | |
| - Etiquettes[http://www.shakthimaan.com/downloads/glv/presentations/mailing-list-etiquette.pdf] | |
| - IRCs | |
| - Freenode, etc. | |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | |
| GSoC | |
| - Stipend based program to work on an open source organization's project for 3 months. | |
| - feb 27th onwards | |
| - march 20th onwards student applications start | |
| Need an inspiration? Check out: http://firstpr.me - Find anyone's first pull request | |
| GitHub Guide on Contributing to Open Source | |
| https://guides.github.com/activities/contributing-to-open-source/ | |
| https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-participate-or-contribute-in-open-source-projects |
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