’Tis the season for open source!
Millions of developers and companies, including Microsoft, benefit from open source software (OSS). Over the years, Microsoft has grown to embrace open source and today has some of the most active repositories on GitHub. In fact, the majority of my work on web apps and frameworks at Microsoft revolves around open source software.
I ❤️ open source. It gives me a sense of accomplishment, community, and purpose. For me, it’s an every day thing that keeps me connected, sharp, and always learning. At its core open source, and software in general, is about people. People, from all over, working together to build and improve shared tools.
Whether it’s FOSS February or Hacktoberfest, anytime is a great time to contribute to open source projects. In keeping with the spirit of giving back, this December it’s time for 24 Pull Requests, a yearly initiative to encourage developers around the world to send 24 pull requests between December 1st and December 24th.
Getting involved in open source can be a bit intimidating. Luckily, there’s guides to help you get started and find projects that might interest you. Contributions can take many forms including improving documentation and examples, fixing issues and bugs, hacking on type systems and test coverage, or adding missing features to your favorite projects. Even small contributions can make a big impact on projects and their maintainers.
If you’re looking for a place to start, consider contributing
- JavaScript API samples for the Universal Windows Platform
- Validation tests to sonarwhal
- Improvements to TypeScript
- Tests to the test262 or web platform suites
- Features to VS Code
Happy contributing!
