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I would recommend in addition to contributing to other projects, to try to start something of your own. Find something small and useful you can work on, and rel

by compay 16y ago

I would recommend in addition to contributing to other projects, to try to start something of your own. Find something small and useful you can work on, and release it. It doesn't matter if it's small - the experience you get maintaining your own project will teach you a lot about how to contribute to other people's projects. My first open source project was a PHP script called "DBMailer" that I wrote when I had been programming for only a few weeks. I'm sometimes embarrassed that it's still floating around the internet with my name on it, but I learned a lot from the feedback I got from it at the time. I wrote a blog post a while back with some do's and don't's for both contributors and maintainers, maybe you'll find it interesting: http://njclarke.com/posts/how-to-do-open-source.html http://njclarke.com/posts/how-to-do-open-source.html Good luck, and stay enthusiastic!

sanxiyn 16y ago
I would actually recommend against starting by launching your project. Havoc Pennington (GNOME guy) wrote "Working on Free Software" in 1999 to explain why. In my opinion every word there is still valid today, with possible exception of CVS. http://ometer.com/hacking.html http://ometer.com/hacking.html And you see, it was called "free software" back then, not "open source project". Sigh.
- compay 16y ago
  Except when you're a buck novice it can be very intimidating and difficult to make a contribution among people who know WAY more than you. It's unfortunately very common for expert programmers to treat novices with disdain, and this can be extremely discouraging. I think there's a lot to be said for practicing your skills on your own so that you have a reasonable level of practice before trying to contribute to other projects.