DEV Community: Akshit Batra

Looking for Contributors

Akshit Batra — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 09:58:55 +0000

We’re starting out on a new journey to build an e-commerce platform using Spring Boot and React with TypeScript. It’s still in the early stages, and there’s so much potential for it to grow into something amazing.

This project is all about learning together and experimenting, but who knows—it might just turn into something really big!

We’re looking for folks who can:

Share ideas for cool features
Help create issues for things that can be done
Contribute with code, testing, or anything else you’re good at

Your contributions, no matter how small, can make a huge difference. If you’d like to pitch in, just comment and we’ll get you assigned to something right away!

Thank you so much for even considering joining us. Let’s make this project a fun learning experience and see how far we can take it together. ❤️

Github Repo: https://github.com/building-for-fun/RepoStore

Open Source project Ideation

Akshit Batra — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 18:03:36 +0000

I've been an active observer of open source projects for quite sometime and after seeing a sad side of open source programs where a lot of open source projects comes within a community and a lot of people just contribute for some score or just for the count of PRs they contribute.

The fact that these programs doesn't have a quality check for the ideas or the quality of maintainers proposing the projects makes me really sad. One instance I would like to quote is that there is a project out there submitted to a web3 program which motivates people to contribute to web3 tech but the repo is made more on a generic side with an empty open ended idea. - Why and how would you be able to motivate people to contribute to web3 stuff when it also has web2 code option plus no restriction on what someone can add to the repo.

Another instance is the quality of contributors randomly creating an issue on a project which they don't even see thoroughly, there is a project out there where the repo contains only html files and some potential contributors suggested to add an AI in that, a filter and even saving the form in local storage when it doesn't even have those capabilities.

Now, coming to my query:
I'm looking to start a quality open source project but see a lot of repetition of ideas around so I would like some suggestions on what could be a good go to idea or if you have a problem in mind which can be resolved if you had an open source project around it.

Thanks in advance.

How to begin with open-sourcing?

Akshit Batra — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 20:00:51 +0000

What I Learned From Hacktoberfest

Open-sourcing is not always about finding open source projects online and starting to contributing to them. Often we lack confidence and skill to contribute to some high-level open-source project which actually adds value to our resume.

But open-sourcing is a great way to learn to contribute and how to work in a team. plus it also helps others around the globe to improve their open-source projects.

How do we begin open-sourcing?

The First Open Source project can be your own project, for example, you are learning some technology and making a project for practice. You can build that project as an open-source project and let your friends know or people on social media and ask them to help you improvise the project.

How to get started with Open Source Project?

To begin with open-sourcing, you need to understand some terms regarding contributing to a project, you don't always need to change or upgrade the project. You can also contribute by raising an issue which is you test the application and report some bug you found out. Or you can go to the issues section in the Github repository and find a bug and try to remove that.
Now some files you need to look for in a repository or if you're opening your own project you need to add so people can effectively contribute.

CONTRIBUTING.md - This file contains the contribution guidelines. How you contribute to the existing project. It's always advised to work on your own branch and not master/main branch. While making changes you need to consider clean code practices and the naming conventions. Some examples can be found here. React | How to contribute , Github Example
LICENSE.md - This file tells under which License the rights for the repository are reserved. An open-source license can be of many types, you may have seen MIT license on many repositories For more detailed information on types of licenses you can read here Open Source Licenses Explained.
Pull Request - When you make changes to some project in your local environment and want those changes to be merged on a remote repository you submit in the form of a pull request which is later reviewed and approved by the owner/maintainers before it is actually merged or implemented on the main version of the project.

There are more Terminologies/Files but that depends on the project maintainers completely. like AUTHORS.md that contains all the author's name and email, I observed that in react repository. There is also a CHANGELOG.md which contains the major/minor changes across various versions of the project.

In the end, you need to try open-sourcing at least once as it gives you a lot of exposure and experience of How people write code across the world and you can also help someone make their software/website/project better. For instance, you love some library but there is no update, go and see if you can try something. Or some new website or product is launched you report their issues and see if you find an opportunity to resolve them. So go out there and try contributing.