How to contribute to Open Source?
I have done lots of open source contributions and helped many fellow developers in getting started with the open source.
In this blog post, we are going to explain the following three things:
- What is Open Source?
- Benefits of Open Source
- How to contribute to Open Source?
What is Open Source?
Open Source is a philosophy that promotes the free access and distribution of an end product, usually software or a program.
What is Open Source software?
Open source software is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance.
Benefits of Open Source
Now let’s see the benefits of open source for a developer.
- Improves your programming skill: By contributing to open source, you can improve your programming skill.
- Build a profile that could help your career: Open Source contribution helps you in building the profile that could help your career as a software developer.
- Meet like-minded people and get mentors: While contributing to open source, you get to meet like-minded people and get mentors.
How to contribute to Open Source?
Now that we have seen the benefits of Open Source, it’s time to know how to contribute to open source.
Mainly there are three ways to contribute to open source as follows:
- Create your own open source project
- Create open source alternatives to commercial software
- Contribute to existing open source projects
Let's see one by one in detail.
Create your own open source project
You might be already working on a project and in that project, there is a piece of code which can be taken out as a separate module.
If you feel, that separate module is useful and can be re-used by fellow developers, then you can open source that piece of code by creating a separate module.
I have done lots of open source contributions.
Create open source alternatives to commercial software
You might be using many 3rd-party libraries which are paid in your project. If you feel, you can create an open source alternative to that commercial software, you can go for it.
In real open source, you have the right to control your own destiny. — Linus Torvalds
Let’s start open sourcing.
Happy Open Sourcing :)
Clap, share if you like it and follow me for the updates.
