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Discussion on: Demystifying Open Source Contributions

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Scott Simontis

I have learned that the best way to have a fair shot at contributing is to find less-popular repos. Sometimes I will stumble across some random repo and notice an issue I think I can fix in an hour or so, and I proceed to do so. Is my name being praised by the React community? Nope. Did > 2 people care about my contribution? Probably not. I look at it like a random act of kindness...as I venture through the woods of Github I come across something out of place and I put it back where it belongs. Maybe it will inspire the author to revisit the project they have been neglecting. Maybe it solved someone else an hour of headache. Whatever the hypothetical case may be, a lot of people with smaller projects are truly grateful for the help and it makes it feel a lot more meaningful.