dev.to staff for The DEV Team

Posted on Aug 25, 2023

Open Source: What’s Your Contribution?

#discuss #career

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

This week we're exploring the experiences of seasoned developers: their stories, hurdles, and successes. Like what you're reading? Follow the DEVteam for more discussions like this!

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Oldest comments (24)

Ayu Adiati • Aug 25 '23 • 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! 😍

José Pablo Ramírez Vargas • Aug 25 '23 • 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.

Godot • Aug 25 '23

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.

Mateus Abelli • Aug 25 '23

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!

Bobby • Aug 25 '23

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!

Chantal • Aug 25 '23

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.

Erin A Olinick • Aug 25 '23

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

Chantal • Aug 25 '23

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

Darshan Gaikwad • Aug 25 '23 • Edited

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

BekahHW • Aug 26 '23

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!

Chantal • Aug 27 '23

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

BekahHW • Aug 28 '23

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

Franky Braem • Aug 25 '23

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.

Joe Mainwaring • Aug 25 '23

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.