Hi I'm Navendu. I started contributing to open-source at the end of 2019 and now I maintain 2 CNCF projects and work full-time in open-source. So, I guess you can say I was successful in contributing.
What helped + advice:
These might seem unconventional. There are standard boilerplate advices out there that really helps. These are some additional things that I think might help people.
Taking time to learn the tech stack of the project:
I was new to Go, containers and container orchestration. This was one of the reason I wanted to contribute to open-source; so that I can learn these stuff. So, taking time to learn these helped me a lot.
Being comfortable with not knowing everything:
Open-source projects could be really huge and the people who built it may not even know every nooks and corners of the codebase. Then how can you know? Even if you have a very limited knowledge of the project and the tech, you can still make solid contributions.
Knowing how to ask questions properly:
Open-source projects usually have a community of contributors and maintainers who will be ready to help you out. But you can't ask questions like "I was assigned this issue, how do I fix it?" to people. That is not very specific and shows that you did very little homework and you are unlikely to get proper answers.
Instead, ask questions like "I was trying to fix this issue, I tried A which resulted in B and not C. Do you know what I'm doing wrong?". Not only such questions give a lot of context, it makes it easier for people to answer your question. Make it easy for people to help you.
Being the fly on the wall:
When I started out, I used to sit at community meetings and read conversations on Slack without really understanding anything. It is easy to feel overwhelmed and quit when you are not understanding things. But trust me, stick to it long enough. Soon, you will be unstoppable at meetings and people would have to drag you off the stage while you are doing a demo on a tech conference.
You will definitely gain knowledge by listening to these conversations.
What I would do differently
I feel I should have started contributing to open-source earlier. The right time to start is now. So just start contributing.
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Hi I'm Navendu. I started contributing to open-source at the end of 2019 and now I maintain 2 CNCF projects and work full-time in open-source. So, I guess you can say I was successful in contributing.
What helped + advice:
These might seem unconventional. There are standard boilerplate advices out there that really helps. These are some additional things that I think might help people.
Taking time to learn the tech stack of the project:
I was new to Go, containers and container orchestration. This was one of the reason I wanted to contribute to open-source; so that I can learn these stuff. So, taking time to learn these helped me a lot.
Being comfortable with not knowing everything:
Open-source projects could be really huge and the people who built it may not even know every nooks and corners of the codebase. Then how can you know? Even if you have a very limited knowledge of the project and the tech, you can still make solid contributions.
Knowing how to ask questions properly:
Open-source projects usually have a community of contributors and maintainers who will be ready to help you out. But you can't ask questions like "I was assigned this issue, how do I fix it?" to people. That is not very specific and shows that you did very little homework and you are unlikely to get proper answers.
Instead, ask questions like "I was trying to fix this issue, I tried A which resulted in B and not C. Do you know what I'm doing wrong?". Not only such questions give a lot of context, it makes it easier for people to answer your question. Make it easy for people to help you.
Being the fly on the wall:
When I started out, I used to sit at community meetings and read conversations on Slack without really understanding anything. It is easy to feel overwhelmed and quit when you are not understanding things. But trust me, stick to it long enough. Soon, you will be unstoppable at meetings and people would have to drag you off the stage while you are doing a demo on a tech conference.
You will definitely gain knowledge by listening to these conversations.
What I would do differently
I feel I should have started contributing to open-source earlier. The right time to start is now. So just start contributing.