Open Source Software (OSS) can be defined as any software that has been released for the purposes of giving other people the rights to study, use, change, contribute to, and distribute the software. There are often licenses and documentation accompanying the source code that detail specific rights and information regarding the open-source project.
- Increase your knowledge and skills with a particular technology -
When you contribute to open source you have to read a lot of code, go through the documentation and learn new technologies.
All the knowledge gained through discussions with project members and by contributing actively to the code base represents an often underestimated competitive advantage for you and your company.
- Contributing to open source project helps your reputation and can leverage your career
These days companies want their employees to have hands-on experience with new technologies if you are contributing to open source you don't have to prove your skills it will all be visible in your GitHub profile.
Active open source contributions emphasize your expertise and knowledge, more than certificates alone will ever do. This is beneficial for advancing your career, be it at your current or an interesting, future employer.
- Contributing to open source projects you are using in your projects lets you better deal with potential risks and plan for the future
When you are adding a new feature or fixing any bug you have to keep all things in mind what impact it will have in the future how it will change the functionality and a lot more questions.
Open source projects usually have a much more transparent roadmap, simply for the sake of collaborating with the contributors, who need to know, where the project is heading for.
- Contributing to open source projects is fun and gives you personal satisfaction
Once you are comfortable with the codebase it is more of a fun activity to code daily and fixes new bugs. You enjoy the process more than the results.
While in your own projects you may be in the position to act quickly when it comes to design or architectural decisions, there may be a lot more discussions in open source projects.
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