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2024 Roadmap to Becoming an OSS Contributor
Introduction
Out of the blue, my goal for 2024 is to become an OSS contributor.
OSS stands for Open Source Software, and here it refers to software published on GitHub.
An OSS contributor is someone who voluntarily participates in and contributes to the development of open-source software, bug fixes, or documentation.
There are two main purposes for participating:
In particular, I decided to become an OSS contributor because of my desire to "connect with elite engineers around the world!"
The catalyst was reading the book "Thinking of World-Class Engineers," which heightened my desire to get involved with engineers active on the global stage.
This book is highly recommended for any engineer!
Being inspired by this book and thinking "I'll get a job at Microsoft" like the author would be too big of a leap, so I decided to start with what I could do and become an OSS contributor.
First, let's look for an OSS project to join!
Recommended OSS Criteria
The criteria for recommended OSS are:
I recommend popular and active OSS projects as they are easier to join.
Also, choosing an OSS project you use regularly is great because it makes it easier to suggest specifications or fixes to the developers!
How to find good OSS
To participate in famous repositories with many stars, searching via GitHub Trending is a good approach.
As an example, let's look at incubator-answer, which is ranked 2nd in trending. It has over 9,000 stars.
The README is well-written and looks promising.
A Q&A platform software for teams at any scale. Whether it's a community forum, help center, or knowledge management platform, you can always count on Answer.
This shows it is an OSS for a knowledge platform.
The README includes a Contributing guide! This repository seems like a very good place to start becoming a contributor.
Now that you know how to find a good OSS project, the next step is to prepare for becoming a contributor.
Specifically, we will work on enhancing our GitHub profile.
Let's Enhance Your GitHub Profile
The spirit of "GIVE"—the idea that contribution is its own reward—is welcomed by everyone. There are no interviews to become a contributor.
However, if people can't tell what kind of person you are by looking at your GitHub profile, you won't be accepted.
As a matter of basic etiquette, you should tidy up your GitHub profile before becoming a contributor.
By the way, this is the profile I created:
Wait, can a GitHub profile really look like this?! That's what I thought too.
The profiles of famous GitHub engineers are very helpful:
Create a Repository with the Same Name as Your Username
By creating a repository with the same name as your username on GitHub, you can edit your profile using the README.
Please try editing your profile by referring to the following:
Summary
I believe OSS is the best place where you can participate at your own pace and connect with engineers around the world! I hope you find an OSS project you like and start contributing.
Let's all have a year of Happy Contributing in 2024!
Thank you for reading this far!
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