Ask HN: How to find an open source project worth contributing to? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to find an open source project worth contributing to?

6 pointsJoeCortopassi3 comments

One of the most common answers you will get, when asking for the best way to demonstrate technical ability, is to contribute to an open source project. As someone who has never contributed to one, but is very proficient in Objective-C/PHP/Javascript, I was wondering what is the best way you have found to contribute to open source projects on sites like GitHub. I guess my biggest questions are as follows:

1. Do you make contact with someone to know what needs to be done, or just start tackling issues?

2. Is there a good way to find projects that are open to pull requests, rather than having a tight circle of contributors that they heavily prefer?

3. What is the scope of work you typically put in for these projects? Is it 2 hours? 10? 100?

If you have any recommendations for projects in Objective-C/PHP/Javascript, that would be great, but this is meant to be language agnostic, so any language will do.

The most important thing (imo) is to start ONLY with something that actually scratches an itch you have. If it doesn't match that, toss it. If it does, then the question about the amount of time to spend will resolve itself.

The best way to get started is find a bug in something you use regularly and patch it. If it's really a bug you can generally expect that it will be accepted. Also, look for projects whose maintainer has been active recently (not necessarily on that project, but at least on GitHub).

Being on GitHub in the first place is a good enough indication that they're open to outside contributions. It's not always true, but much of GitHub's appeal is that it lowers the barriers to contribution.

The scope doesn't have to be huge. You can contribute a simple bugfix in the span of an hour.

I don't know anything about open source per se but have done a lot of volunteer work in the past. Generally speaking: If you show up with a solution, odds are high people will be happy to engage you. Find something that interests you, come up with a solution, and show up with work in hand not just pie in the sky promises of future solutions. If you provide good solutions, people become willing to listen to your grand plans and not just blow you off. Volunteers are notoriously unreliable so if you just Bring It, sooner or later, you become Someone in that circle.

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