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The following is the translation:
According to Sayan Chowdhury, the following are the common questions that people ask when starting the journey of open source:
How to start the journey of open source?
I know x, y, z languages. Which project should I participate in?
How to select projects that meet my skill level?
In this article, I will try to answer these questions in a very concise way. I will also provide some resources that may help you start your first open source project contribution.
What is open source software (OSS)?
As the name implies, the source code of open source software is open, and you can modify and add it. These software are released under various licensing methods, such as BSD, MIT, etc. Reading a few lines of code written by good programmers will naturally improve your coding knowledge and help you understand good coding practices.
Open source JavaScript components 么
You can choose to start with a small contribution to the open source community (not a complete project). For example, start with small, independent, publicly available JavaScript components. They can be simple JS/NodeJS, or framework based components built using React, VueJS, Angular, or any other popular library/framework.
Bit.dev is a popular component center with more than 34000 open source JS components. This is a good way to start small open source projects and gradually increase your contributions to open source. It provides users of components with the freedom to use specific components instead of the entire library.
Whenever you build a reusable component worth sharing (possibly as part of a private project), you can use Bit to publish and document it in your own component collection.
Explore the shared React component in Bit.dev
How to contribute to open source software?
Many people believe that contributions to open source software are all about coding. Not only that, you can also participate in online and offline activities to promote open source projects, repair project documents, write or translate documents, etc. These are ways to contribute to open source software, which can help improve open source projects.
The following figure lists some ways to contribute to Mozilla open source projects.
Image source: Mozilla.org
You should understand that contributing to open source projects can improve your technical ability. Beginners can start with small things, such as fixing bugs, sending pull requests, writing software documents, and so on.
They also allow beginners to learn to write "clean code", which is more readable and maintainable. For programming, there are many different standards to follow. Different teams may follow different standards. When you work on an open source project, you should follow the project specifications.
Another benefit of participating in open source contributions is to jointly build communities. You have the opportunity to be part of a community of like-minded people. If you are a freelancer and your colleagues are active community contributors, you are likely to be noticed by potential employers.
Precautions before making contributions
According to Maryna, you should remember the following three things before making contributions.
Programming language: You should choose a programming language to find open source projects and make sure it meets your skills and tastes.
Project type: Once you choose the language you want to use, you should focus on the type of project you want to contribute. All Github projects are classified into different folders according to Topic. Some examples of topics include "security", "virtual reality", "text editor", and "CSS preprocessor". You can scroll through these categories and select topics that interest you.
Scale of the project: You should pay attention to the scale of the project. For example, projects like VLC are not suitable for beginners because they are very large. When you start, it is recommended not to use large open source projects. Please pay attention to the project labels, especially those labeled as "beginner only", "beginner" and "easy".
I'm ready. What should I do next?
Now that you have learned the basics of contributing to open source software, let me help you start using some resources that can guide you to find projects suitable for beginners in your favorite programming language.
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First Timers Only website
There are many open source projects that are considered "suitable for beginners" on this website. It provides some tutorials to help you become familiar with the contribution workflow on GitHub. It also provides many small additional functions, which will help you take the first big step towards satisfaction in the aspect of open source contribution.
We asked people on Twitter how they felt when they first contributed to open source projects. The answer is:
Yes, it's terrible. But it's worth it!
This website contains a list of open source projects "suitable for beginners", from which you can choose one to start. It also provides more resources, such as OpenHatch, where you can find more beginner friendly projects.
Many Twitter bots are designed to forward tweets with tags such as "novice only" and "suitable for novices". These robots can make these tweets appear on your home page regularly, so that you can decide which projects to contribute while browsing your Twitter feeds.
The following are two common Twitter resources: Your First PR and first times only
Github has many open source projects. At present, there are some projects that are friendly to beginners. They are sorted either by programming language or by difficulty level:
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Awesome First PR Opportunities
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Once you've selected the projects you want to contribute to, it's time to start taking action. There are two resources:
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GitHub project novice contribution guide
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There are competitions organized by several organizations that can encourage you to participate in open source contributions, such as Hacktoberfest and Hacktitude.
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Hacktoberfest is a month long open source software celebration run by DigitalOcean and DEV. Hacktoberfest is open to everyone in the global community. Once you have completed 4 PR submissions, you will receive T-shirts and other merchandise as prizes.
I believe that after reading this article, you have some preparations. I hope you can make contributions to open source projects and do your part for the community in the future.
