Why Contribute to Open Source?
Contributing to open source can be scary and a little overwhelming for beginners. There is a clear need of motivation to take that first step and the journey would not be as intimidating as it seems.
We would all have our own unique goals and motivations but here are some of the common reasons why people find their time and effort contributing to Open Source, so rewarding.
More Efficient Code
Most organizations and individuals contribute to open source projects and their primary reason for getting involved is because they want to make the software better. People find it worth sharing their work because they are being able to use the functionality they have added after the project is updated.
Lower Development Costs
When organizations open-source their projects, they can access a much larger community of developers. Instead of relying only on their team members, they get contributions from many different people . Companies can access work done by hundreds or thousands of developers even if they only have a few developers on staff.
User-friendly software
You don’t have to be a Coding pro or a developer to be eligible to contribute to an open-source project. Projects need technical assistance to create proper documentation, translators to convert text to other languages and designers to make interfaces more attractive.Usability often resonates with user base, which results in more contributors. Thus software gets more user-friendly in the long run.
Career advantages
Today companies are looking to hire for skills related to specific open source projects, and there are very few better ways to manifest our expertise and interest than by actually having written some of the code for a project.
Besides, working on an Open Source project would surely bolster your skills and competency by interacting closely with other members of the community and expanding your network of contacts.
The joy of giving back :)
Many contributors to Open Source find an altruistic sense of joy in giving back. When developers start writing code for their projects, It doesn’t make sense to start a project completely from scratch when much of the hard work has already been done by others. Those who have benefited from that open source code often want to “give back” to the Open Source Community so that other programmers can experience similar benefits.
Contributing isn’t just about Code.
Whatever your reason for avoiding code, there are still plenty of ways you can get involved.
· Become a tester
· Write documentation
· Help with translation
· Working in Design Etc
