Ask HN: How to Find Open Source Projects to Contribute To | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to Find Open Source Projects to Contribute To

3 pointshanniabu6 comments

I want to start contributing to open source projects(javascript). How do you usually go about finding good projects to contribute to? Mind you, I don't have much experience with a lot of libraries outside of jQuery and Bootstrap so the usual "pick one of the libraries you use a lot" doesn't really work in my situation. Also, I'm a bit of a novice, so I am also looking for contributions that are fairly simple to get my feet wet. In also assuming that low hanging frit is what most other people go for too so I can see finding relative easy stuff to work on as being a bit of a challenge.

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First think to consider is what you're interested in, there are many places to look at, like github.com, sourceforge.com (lot of orphaned projects), openhatch.org, google code of course and you should also check http://open-advice.org, is somewhat different from the others:

"Open Advice is a knowledge collection from a wide variety of Free Software projects. It answers the question what 42 prominent contributors would have liked to know when they started so you can get a head-start no matter how and where you contribute. "

Good luck!

Oooo open-advice is a nice find, thanks!

Go see http://codetriage.com/#javascript -- they monitor active projects with simple tasks that need to be done. You can sign up to be nudged by email every month or so. Good luck!

This is how I do it:

First, I made a habit of contributing to open-source everyday, it might be hard in some situations such as traveling, etc, but it helps you learn A LOT. You won't believe how much I've learned by contributing to open-source.

First, explore GitHub, using http://github.com/explore or by just browsing people's profiles, etc.

Subscribe to Changelog Nightly which sends you a daily digest of interesting github repositories. https://changelog.com/nightly/

Also look for other places to contribute, such as Mozilla, you can contribute to Mozilla products easily, they mentor you (the mentors are friendly and great) and you will learn a lot working on big projects (There are a lot of opportunities to work on using JavaScript, see whatcanidoformozilla.com)

As you go further, you'll even find more ways to contribute.

Don't forget that creating something and publishing it as an open-source software is a contributon and it's great! So if you find an idea which might help people, code it, open-source it, share it!

Good luck!

I'm not sure if I can help you but just wanted to say thanks for thinking about donating your time and skills for the community. Maybe my friend Sallar (@sallar in twitter) can help you with finding a good project. Cheers!

Thank you Amir, I will try reaching out. The best way to learn is by doing so I figured instead of working on some useless side project/tutorials, it'd be more productive to give back to the community that has helped me learn so much.

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