How I got selected as an Outreachy intern?
If you are one of those people, who don’t have a good idea of what open-source is, what Outreachy program is, and how to get started with open-source software development, then this article is especially for you.
What is OpenSource?
“The power of Open Source is the power of the people. The people rule.” ~Phillipe Kahn
Open-source software is a software that provides you the freedom of code sharing, modifying, and redistributing but it may/may not be free of cost. Most of the open-source software is available for free hence commonly termed as FOSS (Free and Open Source Software). It provides power in people’s hands where they can customize their software in accordance with their needs, modify the original software, redistribute it, and whatnot.
Now, the question is whether you are aware of any opensource software or not? Okay, then answer me, do you use VLC, Mozilla Firefox, Chromium, Linux, Java, Python, WordPress, Notepad++?
If your answer is ‘yes’, then knowingly or not you are using an OpenSource software and that too for free. Think about this, as if someone asked you that you have to pay for a language like C++, Java, Python for using it, would it have happened that you ever tried to start learning it? If things wouldn’t have been like this, then is there any chance that the growing IT industry we have today, it have been the same? Obviously, no.
The ideology behind Open source development is to make people more powerful by providing them access to the source code and the freedom to explore it. Opensource is the modern culture for development.
“Open source is a development methodology, free software is a social movement.” ~ Richard Stallman
for more you can read one of my articles: Free as in beer Vs Free as in speech
What is Outreachy?
Outreachy is a program that provides internship opportunities twice a year. People can apply from all over the world, work remotely with a highly paid stipend of 5500$ USD for the three-month internship program, and 500$ USD as a travel allowance for attending any tech event, conferences, or summits.
The motive behind Outreachy internships is to promote diversity in tech, support people from underprivileged groups & underrepresented community in tech. Anyone who faces systemic bias or discrimination in the technology industry of their country is invited to apply. It provides a platform that helps the newcomers to start contributing to free and open-source software.
Process to apply
Outreachy internships applications are open twice in a year i.e. first in mid-year and second time at the end of the year.
So, you have the chance to apply twice a year. yaaayyyyy!!!
Before applying to Outreachy, you should first go through the eligibility criteria thoroughly.
For initial applications of mid-year internships, you should start applying in late January and for end of year internships late august. In the initial application, you have to provide your basic information, your time commitment, and 4 essay questions. Then, after a few weeks of the deadline for the initial application, results are declared for those whose initial applications are accepted.
From that day, the contribution period starts in which you have to make at least one contribution to the corresponding project you want to apply. And then, finally, draft your final application and get it reviewed by the mentor to make improvements and modifications in it that increases the chances of getting selected.
I suggest to be an early bird and start exploring the organization and projects before 1–2 months of the initial application start. Most of the time, the organizations are the same but if in some cases, your chosen organization isn’t selected then also the contribution you made will have a significant effect on your final application for other organizations.
Then, in May and December, the internship period starts for the selected candidates.
My journey
It’s not about the journey in the Outreachy selection process, what I really want to share is the path I followed because of my love for open-source software and open-source organizations. Through this article, I want to share what I learned from this journey. Outreachy was not only my wish, somehow it was my need. But I never thought that journey will become this much beautiful.
My very first interaction with an open-source community was with JBoss Organization. My mentor Anuj Garg, helped me to connect with the community, explore its projects like KeyCloak, Debezium, Quarkus, WildFly, etc. At first, it all seemed very difficult and tedious to understand or work with. But with time, I became familiar with the projects and started developing interest in them. Later on, I got to know about the program Google Code-In. I applied for the Google Code-In mentor and got selected as a Google Code-In’19 mentor for JBoss Organization.
Google Code-In is a contest for 13–17 years old pre-university students to help them kickstart their open-source development career. This program was initiated with an idea to make it easy for the children to step into the world of open-source development. The tasks are designed to help the student get comfortable in the environment and develop a number of skills that will help them in later development process. So, the experience of GCI’19 was something that helped me to push myself more into the OpenSource world, I was highly motivated by the enthusiasm shown by the students I mentored.
Then in January, I applied for Outreachy, filled the initial application, and started exploring the communities selected at that time and the projects released. Unfortunately, till then there were no Java projects released, as I’m more comfortable in Java so, I was looking for that one more eagerly.
I was also proficient enough in Python so I chose Ceph as my organization and started exploring its project, setup the Ceph cluster storage on AWS which took more than 20 days. Yes, you read it correct, just setting up the project took this much time for me but no worries, finally I achieved it. I started tackling some good first issues but then just a few days before the contribution period starts OpenRefine was added in the list of organizations and it has released the project based on Java. So at that time, no one would have been as happy as I was. Then, I started studying about that project and organization, I was able to set up the project the same day and started looking for its good first issues. After exploring I started working on it and it took about one week to create my first pull request.
My first pull request
My first pull request in OpenRefine was a part of freebase cleanup from their project. Freebase is a reconciliation webservice whose services have been closed. Many of you may not believe that my 1st pull request was totally a trivial task, I updated the translation files written for many languages. But the happiness I received after submitting that PR and doing the requested changes asked by the mentors and then finally got it merged was something very exceptional and that feeling is still fresh in myself.
Interaction with community
The most special fact about any opensource organizations is that they are always willing to help, support, and guide you. In every organization, there is some kind of public channel like slack, gitter channel, or mailing list to discuss any kind of issues, doubts, and general discussion which you should definitely join to have a better interaction with the community.
I feel blessed for having such supportive and amazing mentors, who entertained even my most basic and obvious doubts. The maintainers and contributors of my organization(i.e. OpenRefine) are too active, they reply on issues, gitter channel as soon as they can. They review the pull requests regularly and help the contributor if they feel he/she is stuck. They always welcome your suggestions on any topic, any feature you want to suggest, etc.
For being selected in Outreachy, I really want to thank my mentors like Antonin Delpeuch, Owen Stephens, Tom Morris, Thad Guidry, and all other co-contributors for providing guidance and support. Without each one of you, this wouldn’t have been possible.
Advice for beginners
Never run for the titles like Outreachy intern or GSoC student. What you should target is the learning part, gain as much knowledge as you can in the process, that is the only asset you will have with yourself always. The stipend will end, the internship period will end but the knowledge you will gain from it, the connections you will build, the family you will make while contributing to that organization is something that you will have forever.
I’ll end this article by stating a few words that opensource development is all about being consistent. I don’t possess anything special, if I can do this then anyone can do it. It takes time to see a significant move in this field but it never ends to be a waste of time. Even if you didn’t get selected in these kinds of programs then also you will be the part of that community, that organization for always. Your name on the contributor’s list will always shine.
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” — Colin Powell
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Thank you.
