How to Start Contributing to Open Source

Release time：2014-06-13
Browse：6084

Contributing to open source can be a fun and rewarding experience, but it can also be difficult to know where to start. This article will guide you through making your first contribution to the world of open source; from deciding which project you want to get involved in, right through to raising your first issue and making your very first code contribution.

If you're not a programmer, or you just fancy a break from coding, this article also includes a list of ways that you can get involved in open source, without writing a single line of code.

What is Open source

Open source is a method of software development that promotes transparency and collaboration. When a project is open source, not only can you download and use it, but you can view its source code too. This means that you can fix bugs, add new features, and generally make changes to the project. Being able to view the source code, also gives you a greater understanding of how the software works.

If you've used open source software before, chances are you're already familiar with GitHub. GitHub is a website that provides repositories where developers can store and share their open source projects, but it's also a way for people from all over the world to collaborate on a single project. Once you've registered with GitHub, you can raise issues, suggest new features, and even contribute your own code to projects hosted on the website. Although GitHub is far from the only code hosting service out there, its popularity in the open source community means that it's a good place for newcomers to start.

Choosing a Project

After you've created your GitHub account, you need to decide which project you want to get involved in. This is where the sheer number of projects on GitHub can be overwhelming. In December 2013, GitHub announced that it had reached 10 million repositories, so you'll need a way of narrowing down your options, if you've ever going to choose a project:

Stick to what you know. Many well-known open source projects use GitHub - JQuery, Ruby on Rails, and Bootstrap, to name a few. So it's worth visiting the websites of open source projects you're already familiar with, navigating to their 'Contribute' or 'Get involved' page, and then checking whether they host their code on GitHub. Making your first contribution, will be much easier if you're already familiar with the project.

Search by programming language. Chances are, you already have some idea which programming language(s) you'd prefer to work with, so why waste time looking at projects written in languages you either don't know, or aren't really interested in? To see only the projects that are written in your preferred language, perform a language: search (for example, language:csharp, or language:java).

Trending. You may also find some inspiration by checking out which projects are currently trending on GitHub. GitHub also maintains Showcases of the trending projects that it deems to be the most unusual, which can throw up some really interesting results, such as projects that are based on emoji.

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