Why contribute to Open Source?
I am almost towards the GSoC Coding period now, and I feel eligible enough to describe a few reasons on why you should contribute to Open-Source.
Open Source Software (OSS) is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance. Open source projects are a great way of developing quality products by working together with other developers. You create code that benefits the community.
Learning
You get to learn and develop a lot of software skills. You gain a clear idea of contributing to previously written code and following patterns and guidelines being followed by the community. Also, each project has separate different levels of required tests and documentation. So you get to learn right from the setup of the project till finding where the error is and successfully implementing the changes. Also your knowledge of using a version control system increases.
As you keep contributing you realize that you gain a deeper understanding of concepts involved in the project. Usually, your first contribution is not up to the mark of the project, or maybe you had to implement things differently. So your submission will undergo reviews and discussions which will help you develop, get a better grasp of the accepted practices in development and writing code which the next developer can clearly understand.
Building a portfolio
Once you start open-sourcing it’s like an addiction and you start becoming members of various communities. This opens the doors to various opportunities because your Github profile stands out and many communities conduct conferences which you get invited to. These conferences are learning hubs and a great place to network. Along with this, you get a community for being involved constantly, to develop, brainstorm and contribute.
Make your own ideas available
You have an idea which can be useful to many people, and you need a platform to develop and showcase it? You can obviously bring it up to your community and start working on the project.
OSS helps us create better technology, nicer tools and user-friendly work environments. Be it Linux or Git, every great project was once at a very initial stage and now there are so many contributors that have helped make it awesome and wonderful. We cannot deny that almost everyone reading this blog is using these.
My GSoC was with AnitaB.org Open Source and I worked on a project from scratch. It was just a proposed idea by the community, and so many discussions and brainstorming have now made it at a stage which maybe no one thought at the beginning. It is a great feeling to be contributing to the benefit of many and learning so much, in a short time.
Willing to meet you at the other end of your laptop! Happy Developing…
