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About this talk
Contributing to open source projects might feel scary, but there is a place for everyone — across all levels of knowledge.
It's up for all of us to set our own pace in the open source ecosystem. I hope that my talk helps you do this!
Takeaways
- What you need to start doing open source work
- What you don't need to start doing open source work
- Different ways to contribute, depending on what you have at your disposal.
Slides
>> Click here to download slides
🌈 Comment below and ask me questions — I might just answer them during my live speaker discussion!
About Túlio Leão
Túlio had always wanted to be involved in open source, and with the tips in this talk, he made it happen! Before long, he was a contributor and the maintainer of three projects, and a few organizations — who knows how many by the time you see this talk!
This on-demand talk is part of CodeLand 2021 — a virtual conference brought to you by CodeNewbie & DEV on September 23 & 24, 2021.
Top comments (33)
Hi! Reminder that if you have any questions for Tulio to drop them here! We'll address these questions in the live speaker discussion coming up soon.
I tried to grab my first open source ticket for Microsoft's BICEP program, and realized pretty quickly I was not able to figure out what was going on at all. I think next try should be on something in a language I have used before...
It is important to find projects that have a good contributor guide as well. Even if you aren't super familiar with a language the repo maintainers can make it easier to get started. This might be a good list to check out 😄
github.com/Virtual-Coffee/virtualc...
Thank you Christina! It's nearly spooky season and I have a big goal to get started contributing to open source over the next month!
If you are ever interested in contributing to Forem (The software that powers DEV and CodeNewbie) let me know.
I'd love to help you find a good issue and get started 😄 If you have specific programming languages you work with and need help finding a different project I could probably help with that too!
I am INCREDIBLY interested, Christina! I am most practiced in Javascript, React, MySQL, and MongoDB-- but always am hungry to learn new things. Any help toward a good first issue would be hugely appreciated, and any advice will be taken to heart. Not sure the best way to connect-- but my github is github.com/callumreid. Thank you for the kindness 😁
I'm working on a list of good issues this next week for Hacktoberfest so I will definitely reach out to you. I'm on Twitter too if you are there and want to chat through DMs. twitter.com/coffeecraftcode
Is there a place for a beginner to contribute on big, widely used projects like ASP.NET, that are backed by a big company like Microsoft and already have thousands of contributors, or should we start with smaller, more obscure projects that have a smaller team?
@stevenyholm , great question. I answered that on the panel, but in case you missed, my answer is "Yes"! Projects are being open sourced for a reason: people want to get the community involved, regardless if it's an obscure project or a big one.
There are advantages on each:
for the obscure/smaller ones you're more likely to see the impact of your work and also to connect with people at a deeper level, as it's a small community. There the requirements might be lower for accepting and merging PRs.
for the big ones you'll probably have an easier time finding people to help you out, have more resources available to read (such as contributing guidelines and wikis) and contact with potentially big continuous integration and deployment infrastructures, but also the number of good issues to start with might always be low, as people run to get them.
Very helpful information. Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions, both during the live-streaming speaker discussion and in writing.
Great insight here! Never thought about "spreading the word" as a way of contributing to open source. This way of categorizing forms of contribution by the amount of effort it takes is really helpful on making new devs lose the fear of contributing.
@tiffany thanks for the kind words! It really helps to spread the word, I've done it myself, sending a cool project to someone only to see that person become a contributor later on :)
Open source is a great way to start dipping a toe in as a newbie developer, gain confidence, learn and feel like you're working with other developers.
Thanks Tulio for the wonderful talk. It was very informative for people like me who wants to start contributing to open source projects.
Hacktoberfest is coming up. A lot of maintainers prepare their projects to welcome newcomers, so it's a good time to jump in if you feel like it :)
What are some good resources for finding open source projects to contribute to? Aside from just haunting GitHub?
@jrrohrer there are some websites dedicated to this such as goodfirstissue.dev/ or up-for-grabs.net/ , but scouring GitHub also works, specially if you use tags such as the ones for programming languages.
October is a special month for open source too, with the Hacktoberfest event coming up. A lot of maintainers prepare their projects to welcome newcomers, so it's a good time to jump in!
Thanks so much for your answer! I will definitely check out those resources. I always hear about Hacktoberfest, but I've never looked into it. Time to do some reading :)
Open Source is always ❤️
This talk was soooo soothing for me. Listening to all those points felt great. You really covered a lot of areas. This was really informative. Thanks a lot Tulio.
@noviicee such nice and kind words, thanks and glad to help!
:D <3
Hey, Túlio! Fellow Brazilian here. Thanks for the talk, I'm very interested in knowing more on how one can contritbute to Open Source. I'd love to learn how to find begginer friendly projects that a newbie can contribute to.
@tiffany there are some websites out there dedicated on finding repositories with good issues to start with, such as goodfirstissue.dev/ or up-for-grabs.net/. If you find a cool project, but feel unsure on whether there are good tasks to start there, a good option is to reach out to the maintainers on their Discord or whichever channel they use to communicate and state that you want to help and need directions. Most will be glad to find a task for you!
Thanks for this topic Tulio!
Yay cpp & Qt! I used Qt 4 in a personal open source project (a long time ago.) However, I have not participated in other's open source projects. I was also blocked by the feeling that I didn't have enough experience to contribute. Also, I didn't like the feeling that my time would get swallowed with a huge project.
Your ideas are helpful at removing the stress of starting!
Wow, just code open a PR! That's so liberating!
@fizzybuzzybeezy the commitment and time you devote is up to you, if you're not a maintainer of this project, people won't expect you to make contributions often and periodically. In fact, most of the people that contribute to projects I maintain do something one day and return weeks or months later, and that's fine, they're still helping the software and community grow, and are as welcome as the ones that appear daily!