How to get into open source?

3 min readOct 17, 2021

Hey folks! I’m contributing this article to help beginners, who wants to start with open source and looking for quick guidance.

What is open source?

The term “Open Source” was introduced by The Open Source Initiative in the 1990s. Open source software refers to public source code made available to everyone with license that users can access or modify for free by making peer-reviewed suggestions or fixes.

Open source software, like libraries and frameworks, can also be reused in other programs, and most programming languages you use for your daily coding are also open source.

Where you can find open source projects?

Open source projects can be found on many hosting sites, some popular websites are Github, GitLab, SourceForge, Bitbucket, GitKraken, etc

What is Git and Github?

Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. Git is so helpful for open-source projects because it facilitates the contributions of many developers. Each contributor/collaborator can branch off from the main or master branch of the code base repository to isolate their own changes, and can then make a pull request to have these changes integrated into the main project.

GitHub, Inc. is a most popular provider of Internet hosting for software development and version control using Git.

Now we will look for actual flow of contribution into open source

How to contribute?

To contribute into open source you need to first find the projects of your domain on these sites, one organization can have more than one projects, then follow these steps

Explore projects and it’s codebase
Set project locally on your device according to the instructions given in the README.md
Find issue, bugs, documentation, etc in that project
Go through contributing.md, if not present create new issue, describe your fix and steps to reproduce it, ask in the comments politely to get assigned for that issue.
Start working on it, send pull request and wait for review and merge from maintainers. For more, check references given below.

Congrats you did your contribution in open source!! 🎉

Now, Search for open source programs to participate, and start preparing for it. It’ll help you to build your experience for your CV/resume.

What are the advantages to start contributing to open source?

You’ll get a better understanding of technology, improve your coding skills.
You will get coding experience like industry standards and guidance from developers.
You will be able participate into known open-source programs like Hacktoberfest, Google Summer of Code, Google Season of Docs (GSoD), Github Campus Expert Program, Outreachy Program, MLH Fellowship, GSSOC, Season of KDE, FOSSASIA Codeheat, GirlScript Summer of Code (GSSoC) and many more..
You’ll get a chance to build your connections into the inclusive open source communities/organizations.

For more open source opportunities check resources below.

Does programming necessary to contribute into open source projects?

No. It’s not necessary if you’re a beginner, you can start with your interest and then learn according to your need.

Join Open Communities

These communities are very inclusive for the beginners and enthusiasts, it’s important to be in a community when you are starting with open source programs. I know some communities you can find on discord are, EddiHub community, MLH, Coding in Flow, Scaler by Interviewbit, Love Babbar’s Server and you can search for many like these.

References/ Resources

Open source is for EVERYONE!

Thanks for reading this article till the end if you liked it give it a clap!! Take care, Happy Coding!!😄