Free and Open Source Software

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How to start contributing to FOSS projects? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi, I dont know if this is the right comunity to ask, please tell me otherwise. I apologize for my poor English, I'll try my best!

I'm a professional software developer with about 10 years of experience. I have only worked on closed-source enterprise projects throughout my entire career. I am not familiar with the workflow involved in FOSS projects.

Is there a guide that summarizes or documents all the information or standards you need to know to contribute to any FOSS project? This includes the standards for commit messages, tags, and how to propose a new feature or report a bug.

I understand that this may be basic information for many of you, but for me, it feels a bit overwhelming. Also, I think that I'm afraid of working on a codebase that I'm not familiar with. There is also a fear of my own code being judged online. You know, you can never escape imposter syndrome.

I appreciate any info, hopefully I'll be helping on improving some of my favourite apps in the future.

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[–] ytipik 1 points 1 year ago

I had the same thoughts when I started contributing a year ago. I was scared of my code being judged, but it is where I learnt the most. I started adding some small improvements and then opened my first pull request. However, the maintainer was very nice! Now, after a lot of contributions, I released my first project. As a maintainer, I am always when happy when new contributors come as it is a source to learn new things and have some help. So don't worry! You will enjoy a lot when you will see your changes in a new release!