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How YOU can contribute to OSS, a beginners guide

Chris Noring on October 28, 2019

Follow me on Twitter, happy to take your suggestions on topics or improvements /Chris TLDR; this post hopes to show you, who are curious about OS...

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Johannes Lichtenberger • Oct 28 '19

Awesome description, will link it in my OSS-repositories 👍

Chris Noring • Oct 28 '19

Thank you, Johannes :)

Johannes Lichtenberger • Oct 28 '19

You're welcome :-)

Evan • Oct 30 '19

Thanks for the article! I work for a small engineering team (~15). I want to push our team and organization to open source (ie. contributing to OSS projects we use and open sourcing some of our tools). My initial thinking was to start with some education and the important of giving back to OSS.

What are some methods or tips for getting buy in from the team and management for OSS?

Chris Noring • Oct 30 '19

it makes your workplace more attractive to developers they might want to hire, it shows it's a fun place to work
it's also a way to try ideas out and have developers on your company start collaborating that might not be on the same team
software developed might get additional help from the outside through PRs.. that might lead to finding people you want to recruit or work with for freelance gigs..

In short:

it makes you look good to help finding talent
promotes more cross-collaboration across teams in your company
the software developed might benefit both your company and others, and you get external help to make that software even better
it might make it a more fun place to work, especially if devs are allowed to spend x hours on it per week, so it might help to retain staff.