If you are a beginner in software development and looking for good resources to implement what you learned or want to start your journey in the voyage of open-source contribution, then this post is gold for you. Open source projects refer to projects whose source code is made open by the developers so anyone can contribute, use, or extend the project. This means if you want to add more features to that, want to reskin that, or want to use that personally or commercially then you are good to go. Also, don’t forget to check the license terms for the project.
What Topics We Are Going To Cover
We are going to cover the following topics in that post:
- Methods to find beginner-friendly open-source projects
- Things you need to consider before making contributions to open-source projects
- Summary
Methods to find beginner-friendly open-source projects
In this topic, I will cover plenty of ways to find open-source projects in which you can contribute as a beginner.
Open Source Project Website
There is an open source project website called OpenSourceCollection where you can find a range of projects related to different categories and programming languages. But why did I mention this website as my primary method to find projects for beginners? Well, as you know you are a beginner in this ocean of development I suppose you have worked on limited languages and frameworks and you need the projects tailored to your tech stack. To do that you can go to that website and filter out projects according to your stack. For example, if you have worked on the Laravel framework then you can apply the filter of technologies and filter out projects where the primary tool is Laravel.
Other than filtering features that website also allows you to view the screenshots and live demos of the project. Is it cool to first experience the whole application to which you are going to contribute? Well, I think it’s a wonderful experience to visually see things in addition to just reading the docs.
Projects with tags “good first issue”
On GitHub, you can view all the open issues in a project. If you don’t know about GitHub then think of this as a place where most of the open source project lives. It’s an online directory of open source projects and packages. In the issues tab of any project, you can view all the issues. A GitHub issue could be anything asked by any user like it could be a feature request, project issue, or general discussion. Each issue has a set of tags, that serve as the metadata for the project.
Now what you have to do is you have to filter the issues by tag. Select “good first issue” as a tag and apply the filter. If you see any open issues under that tag then congrats. This tag refers to those issues that beginners could pick. They are easy and simple if you have the right tools and knowledge about the technology in which the project is developed.
Check for clear documentation
If a project has comprehensive and clear documentation then it could be a sign of a good project to start working on as a beginner. Why is that so? This is because if the project has clear docs then you can understand the project well. As a result, you will be able to understand the issue that you are going to fix.
On GitHub or any other tool that hosted the target project, you can find a readme.md file. It will contain the documentation of the project. But that’s not true all the time. Sometimes, the management of the project provides you with a documentation link instead of mentioning everything in the readme.md file. Probably you can find those docs link the readme.md file.
Open-Source Directories
There are plenty of websites that list the projects and issues that need your help. For example, goodfirstissues.com is a website that directly gives you the links to the project issues with the label “good first issue”. Remember this phrase? If not then here is my humble reminder, we had discussed that tag in one of the methods above.
You can also visit up-for-grabs.net, which is a website that lists projects which has a lot of tasks, especially for beginners and new contributors. Like if you are an expert in your domain but a new contributor to the world of open source then you must try that site.
Things you need to consider before making contributions to open-source projects
According to me, you need to consider the following things before starting this contribution work:
- You must have good code review skills. This is essential. If you can’t understand the code written by other developers then it’s hard for you to make contributions because in the contribution you have to work on the existing source code written by a group of developers. You can fix their code if you have a good understanding of what’s already written.
- Check the stack in which the project is developed. The project could be developed in more than one technology (language/framework). Make sure you have the necessary skill set before going for a contribution.
- Read the contributor guidelines of the project. This is a set of instructions that will tell you how to contribute. Normally you can find that in the contribute.md file of the repository.
Summary
So, in this article, we have learned a lot about finding open-source projects to contribute to as a beginner. We had discussed a lot of ways to find the best projects according to your stack and ability. Also, I mentioned some points that you need to consider before going for a contribution.
Meta Description:
In this post, I revealed plenty of steps that will help a beginner in finding beginner-friendly open-source projects. Learn step-by-step methods to locate projects matching your tech stack and skills, including visiting the websites like OpenSourceCollection.com for tailored project options and using GitHub tags like “good first issue” to pinpoint beginner-suited challenges.
Also, I put some light on the things you should consider before going for a contribution on an open source project.
