why developers contribute to open-source software:
For developers, contributing to OSS means that they not only practice their programming skills, but that they also learn and gain feedback from more accomplished programmers. This jumping-in-the-deep-end style of learning provides aspiring programmers with real-life, first-hand experience and greatly accelerates their learning curve.
Contributing to OSS allows developers to become better at reading code produced by others, finding and fixing bugs, and adding their code into the main repository. These are all activities developers experience working in a tech company.
Most people who are passionate about something strive to be recognized for the quality work they produce, and for some, developing software is a huge passion. Recognition from members from the OSS community not only encourages and motivates a developer to improve his or her skills, it can also create a number of opportunities, such as job offers and invitations to attend conferences and events, etc.
The fact that OSS is visible to the public means that prospective employers can inspect your code and assess your skills as a developer based on the code you have written. In contrast, commercial (proprietary) software doesn’t provide you with the same proof of your abilities, and overall it is much harder to gain experience in this realm.
This desire to contribute can also resonate on a business level. If a business owner or company is using a piece of open-source software and would like to make some changes or add new features to meet a certain business need, then this is also a real possibility. The result is a win-win situation, as the business gets a new feature (either by developing it themselves or suggesting it to the core team) and the software also receives a new feature that can often be utilized by other users.
First contributions is a hands-on tutorial that walks you through contributions workflow on GitHub. When you complete the tutorial, you have made a contribution to the same project.
https://up-for-grabs.net is a site that aggregates (rolls up and makes easy to explore) projects that actively want help. They label those projects with things like “up-for-grabs”, “jump-in” or “help wanted.”
goodfirstissues.com is a site that aggregates the latest issues with the label “Good First Issue”, which is a GitHub feature for finding easy issues to tackle (see here).
goodfirstissues.com empowers first-time contributors to find and select issues that they want to solve.
goodfirstissue.dev curates easy pickings from popular open-source projects, and helps you make your first contribution to open-source.
CodeTriage helps you subscribe to your favorite open-source projects and get a new open issue from them in your inbox every day.
Read blog posts and guides on how to contribute to an open source project, then pick one!
If you’re just getting started with tech and are planning to become a social developer, we’ve made a documentary training movie for you! Get Involved in Tech walks you through setting up your GitHub account, exploring StackOverflow, setting up a blog and starting to tweet!