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Open Source: What’s Your Contribution?

dev.to staff on August 25, 2023

Do you actively contribute to open source projects? What motivates you to contribute, and what are the benefits of participating in the open source...
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chantal profile image
Chantal

I started contributing just today hahahahaha! I contributed to github.com/firstcontributions/firs... where l just added my name. I know it sounds simple and ridiculous but it's important to me cos it was just my first time.

I learned the standard fork -> clone -> edit -> pull request workflow and l feel great about it.

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erinao profile image
Erin A Olinick

This is awesome @chantal ! If you haven't already, you should shout out this achievement in weekly wins!

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Chantal

Thank you @erinao ! I'll just do that.

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BekahHW

You might be interested in checking out some of the work we're doing at OpenSauced to help folks who are getting into open source. If you have any questions, let me know!

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Chantal

Hello, @bekahhw ! Thank you. So where can l start off? Following those links you shared?

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bekahhw profile image
BekahHW

Definitely check out the links and if you have any questions about them, let me know!

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Darshan Gaikwad • Edited

I see your github readme file, which helps me contribute to open source.@chantal

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Ayu Adiati • Edited

As documentation lead at Virtual Coffee community, I actively contribute to improve our community docs. My motivation is to make it easier for our members finding answers around the community, navigate things in the repositories, and to onboard new members 🙂

Being part of some open source communities, I learned more about the tech, open source, the value of collaboration, and above all, make (new) friends! 😍

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José Pablo Ramírez Vargas • Edited

I have always had the feeling that people that do open source are smarter than me, and that I shouldn't distract these greater minds. This has kept me away from seeking active participation in 3rd party projects.

I have taken plenty from open source, though, so I happily contribute with my own thing. My two most recent additions are wj-config and vite-plugin-single-spa. I created them because I had a need that could not be fulfilled by any other package, and in order to try to repay my use of other people's packages, I give back like this when I can.

I might, however, start venturing into the single-spa world in a more personal way, as I have applied to be part of the core team. Don't know if I'll be accepted or not. I literally have not much idea of how big open source projects work.

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Ben Halpern

I contribute consistently here:

GitHub logo forem / forem

For empowering community 🌱

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Godot

I'm a small-time contributor to Godot Engine, here is my contributions to the godot repository. Open-source projects are a valuable and collaborative way to contribute to the software community! My tips would be:

  • Start with Your Interests. Choose projects that align with your interests or skills. Contributing to something you're passionate about will keep that motivation going.
  • Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Everyone makes them, the reviewers would point things up if there's improvement could be made on your code.
  • Read the guidelines and follow them. Each repo usually has their own set of guidelines, conventions, and style, it's best to follow it as well.
  • Start small, even if it's just a simple fix. GitHub Repositories usually has that special label called, "good first issue", if you find them see if you can fix it.
  • Reviewing code submitted by others can help you learn from their approaches and coding styles. It's also a way to give back to the community.
  • And lastly, be patient and persistent. Not all contributions will be accepted immediately. If a contribution is rejected, view it as an opportunity to learn and improve.
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NLxDoDge

I do some bug reports or feature requests here and there. But not much.

Some of the things I use are fixed before I can even do anything, and I once tried to make something. But that application used Svelte and was highly subjective to a flavor different from the standard that everybody else used.

So it was really difficult to find where I needed to fix the issue. In the end I made a feature request and the dude did in it 30 minutes 😲

But that is the speed when you know a project.

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Bobby Iliev

I love open-source! I'm the maintainer of a couple of projects including Laravel Wave and I also have a few open-source eBooks that I've written a couple of years ago!

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Joe Mainwaring

Do you actively contribute to open source projects?

I have been contributing to the OSS community for ~ 10 years now

What motivates you to contribute, and what are the benefits of participating in the open source community?

A few different motivators contribute to my continued participation:

  • If it's work related, providing feedback or submitting fixes to dependencies we use is self-serving. While I have had to fork projects to patch bugs as an interim solution, I much prefer those fixes living with the original source code so it's accessible by others and integrated with any other fixes/enhancements the developers deploy.
  • Technology isn't just a career for me, it's a passion. I'm always tinkering with tech in my spare time, and exploring new projects/tools to evaluate their worthiness for use.
  • Open source enables rapid technology growth by allowing us to avoid recreating every different cog needed to have a prod-ready project. Without OSS, there would be less of us in the industry.
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adriens

Since a few months now, I contribute to endoflife.date.

My very last contribution was to add ArgoCD:

[new-product] Add Argo CD #3337

❔ About

Argo CD is a very widely used solution around K8S, GitOPS : it makes it possible to deploy in a very comfortable way.

Declarative continuous deployment for Kubernetes.

It gains everyday in traction, so it deserves its page on endoflife.date 🦑

argocd-ui

Each time I use a new tool/middleware I try to add it to endoflie.date so anyone can interoperate with lifecycle management from api and many other cool tools.

Also, the core team is very cool and engaged.

More about this project below:

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Jani Giannoudis

After years of development, I completed the open source project with a payroll engine.
github.com/Payroll-Engine/PayrollE...

The solution is a business-oriented framework with some new concepts:

  • Case-driven data entry
  • Automated testing of business logic
  • Customization with low-code and no-code

There are 15 GutHub repositories in total, consisting of the backend server (REST API), a web application (Blazor) and an automation console.

All participation is welcome :-)

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Paul J. Lucas

Do you actively contribute to open source projects?

Yes.

What motivates you to contribute ... ?

I enjoy doing it.

[W]hat are the benefits of participating in the open source community?

I don't think there is a single "open source community." I certainly don't think I participate in it. I write code that's open-source and put it out there. If somebody else finds it useful, that's nice, but I don't particularly care.

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Artak Avetyan

What motivates you to contribute

As an author of FOSS AREG engine, I contribute, because of passion. Cannot stop working on this young project 😬 Because it becomes more interesting, it gets more downloads and I have a clear idea how to create new businesses based on that (free and open source is part of the idea). Hope it will work 🙄

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Franky Braem

For me open source is a way to keep up with all the new things. At work I'm the oldest member of the team, but I think, thanks to open source, I know most of what goes on in software development. It all started with BASIC, thru COBOL, C/C++, Java, JavaScript, and now Python. Open source also learned me what design patterns are and how to do refactoring.

In the past I've contributed code to Poco but my focus shifted to scripting. Open source is for me also a way to share the code that I write in spare time. It can help others, or not, that's all fine. You can find it on my Github account.

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Ilias Papoutsidis

I am contributing to translate from EN -> Greek, because I want to make easier the life of countrymen when they decide to enter the web development!
github.com/javascript-tutorial
github.com/Devographics

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Mateus Abelli

I do tiny bug fixes on documentation websites of some tools I use and it's awesome when your PR gets merged, even if it's just 2 lines of CSS here or a typo there... good feeling being part of something!

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BekahHW

Last week, I contributed to a handful of the OpenSauced repos by added licenses. I recently finished up an issue for freeCodeCamp, which I wrote about here.

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Thomas Hansen • Edited

About 10,000 commits (real commits) the last 5 years, over 100+ repositories. I've changed my GitHub email address 2 times the last 5 years, but if you sum up my contributions, I'm the by FAAAAR most active user on GitHub from the Island of Cyprus, 2 million people. Number 2 on the list have 50% of my commits. I think there are less than 20 people world wide with similar (real) commits - Ignoring bots ... 😊

Username: polterguy if you want to check 😁

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Alessandro Pischedda

My last contribution was on fastapi-sso library in which I've added the Gitlab sso.

Anyway when I can I try to do some PR in various repository which I use in some of my personal projects.