Contributing to Open Source

#hacktoberfest #opensource #gsoc

October. Hactober. The month dedicated to tech and coffee (October 1st is the World Coffee Day)! In this month the most exciting things in the field of technology are announced and released. One of them, I am sure all of you know already, is Hactoberfest. With all that fuzziness of the first 5 days of October I remembered my very first contribution to Open Source and how things changed over the years.

Let me tell you a story...

...about my experience in Open Source which started back in the summer of 2017. I was first introduced to Google Summer of Code by a professor in University. Actually I remember reading in his e-mail Participate in Google Summer of Code for a salary of 6.000€ or something like that. I jumped over my chair and I instantly made the calculations ".... 6000 divided by 3 equals...." TADA!! (SPOILER: it turned out to be less than that because, Greece, you know).

I remember searching the internet trying to find information about the whole thing that Google sponsor students to work on Open Source projects. It must be a joke, I said and I searched on the organizations that was participating.

After about a week I applied. The only thing I was thinking of, was the money. Yeah don't judge me that's my truth. I was thinking all the purchases I would do with my first payslip. For Greece even if the amount wasn't 6k with all the taxes and stuff, it was still a great amount of money for a student.

I will never forget the day the results came out. NEVER. I was out with friends and I got an email.

WHAT A JOY!!! I couldn't believe in my eyes. I thought someone messed up with me. Oh boy I was accepted to Mono's cppSharp project!!! (literally to this day I find it pretty hard to explain to others what this library does. But this seemed to be so interesting to me back then.)

The Open Source adventure began...

...right away actually. We used Skype for internal communication because of Microsoft (Mono is a Xamarin project where Xamarin belongs to Microsoft) and my training began in early May. And what a summer that was indeed. I spent hours in my PC trying to understand and compile the project locally and also learn new things. I also met some of the contributors in that time. They weren't students. They were real people, with daytime jobs, that helped and supported an Open Source project in the evenings FOR FREE.

That was it. I realized it. I realized what open source is. Some crazy people with no lives that want to code all day long.
No. Of course not. A great community with great people that offer their knowledge for free in exchange for a better world. They are heroes. Remember, when I thought of this whole thing I got money in my mind. I wanted that money and I did what I did for the money. They did it for the community. They did it for free. They did it for you and me that use OSS every day thanks to those HEROES.

Through that summer I learnt what I haven't learnt in 3 years in University. I learnt how to use Git. How to write clean and documented code. How to interact with people from another part of this world. How to report a bug in a big OS library. How to dig into large scale projects and walk your way. How to create unit tests. The list could go on and on but the thing is you can't put a price tag on those. The value of those things can't be bought with money. There are so many maintainers right now and so many people willing to provide help, teach and work with young developers that are willing to contribute to Open Source. I get it, #GoodFirstIssue is not the ideal start but if you chat with those guys and girls if you spend two hours of your free time trying to understand what this project is about I am more than sure that someone will prompt you to a good first issue and give you all the help you might need.

..through the end of the summer

... i didn't even care about the money. All I wanted was to get up in the morning and work on that little thing that I couldn't solve. In 4 months I was a better developer and this was one of the most exciting things I did in my student years. Unfortunately I didn't find out about this earlier. This was my one and only participation on GSoC and I am grateful for all the things I learnt. This is a reminder for young readers and developers who are still students and want to elevate their careers. There are sources outside in the wilderness that will help you on the long run if you use them correctly. In my case I became a better developer and person. It could be just money and nothing more than that. But fortunately it wasn't. In your case that might be something entirely different but thats fine, everyone is different.

...in the end...

...Open source is not about money (at least for you and me. Funding an Open Source projects is another topic for someone more experienced than me) and its definitely not about a T-Shirt. Don't be like me and your motives are money (or a T-shirt in our days). See deeper in the value of Open Source and find your meaning when contributing. It's a great feeling having your code published on a OSS release. Maintainers out there, for me are Tech Heroes. They work hard to maintain a quality and bug free library/software/package. Respect them, they deserve it. Chat with them, they are friendly and eager to help because in the end your contribution helps them as well. They will guide you to the right direction and find a good First Issue. Changing the title of their project, that they might have put hours upon hours on, to magical and wonderful project is just disrespectfull.

If for any reason you are curious in learning more about my summer there, what I did and see my code, you can find my story here in the official Monos blog. Also you can find me in Twitter, or write a comment below 😀