My First Time Contributing to an Open Source Project
One of the first projects I’ve been tasked to complete at Red Hat is to create a program to educate undergraduate students at Boston University about how to contribute to an open source project. While brainstorming ideas and creating wireframes for potential tools, I realized that it might be problematic for someone who has never contributed to an open source project to teach others how to do so!
Therefore in order to educate myself and others about how to contribute to open source, I embarked on a 5-hour journey to contribute to my very first open source project. This was a very exciting task for me because I have always wanted to contribute to an open source project, but have never done so due to my lack of confidence in my coding abilities and experience with GitHub and Terminal.
Despite my fears, I set out on a journey to conquer open source. Below you will see a beautiful diagram I outlined detailing my experience contributing to the repository “Refuge Restroom.”
As you can see from the diagram above, there were several lessons I took away from my experience.
- You Don’t Need to Code to Contribute
Now that I think about this concept, it totally makes sense. There are many aspects of a project apart from coding, such as design, documentation, and user experience. This was very exciting for me to learn because although one day I hope to be able to contribute code to an open source project, designing is more of my strength.
2. Git Going on GitHub
Even though I already knew how to use GitHub before this experience, it reinforced a lot of skills that I had already learned about the relationship between GitHub and Terminal. GitHub is an integral tool to learn when contributing to open source projects and they actually have a lot of awesome documentation about how to contribute to open source projects. Cute cats and great tutorials? You go GitHub!
3. The Open Source Community, is …Open?
Reading through all the documentation about open source made me realize, the open source community is…open! All that fear I had before about contributing to open source earlier was nonsense because most of the people in the community were encouraging all forms of collaboration no matter how big or small.
4. Open Source is An Easy Resume Builder
Contributing to open source is a quick, easy, and fun way to show recruiters what you are capable of without wasting time that could have spent eating, laughing, or engaging in any other activities that you enjoy. I honestly can’t think of any better way to add projects/experience to your resume while still avoiding a lot of unnecessary hard work.
So what are you waiting for? Contribute to your first open source project by first reading this very useful guide! For reference, I’ve added a screen shot of the homepage I redesigned below.
