4 ms·

Why you should contribute to Open Source?

59 points by hgarg 16y ago

nadam 16y ago
"Open Source projects offer you a chance to work on something that you want rather than something that others want you to work on." As far as I am concerned starting my own project is more what I want rather than fixing bugs in other people's complicated code which code might also be philosophically very alien to me. To take compromises there is my day job. To work on cool things I start my own project/startup.
- aaronblohowiak 16y ago
  This lecture was given to students to start to understand how real software development works and get an edge on their classmates while applying their technical skills.
gkoberger 16y ago
The biggest problem with contributing to [edit: established] Open Source projects is the barrier to entry. As someone who gets paid to work on a popular open source project full time, I can tell you it's often way harder than it's worth to get involved. You need to download and get the code running on your computer, and configure everything to run correctly. You need to learn the ins and outs of how everything works. You need to install and learn about the code the project depends on (and, most projects will have numerous vendor libraries). You need to get acquainted with the main developers on IRC, so you don't step on any toes. You have to learn how they do bug ticketing, and you need to find bugs you can do. And your first code review? Trust me, it'll be painful. It's not easy to get started. If I left my job today, would I continue to contribute? Sure. But only because I already have a foot in the door, and know my way around. All that being said, I truly believe universities should require students contribute to at least one open source project- it's a great learning experience, and the projects and their users benefit from the volunteer labor.
- motters 16y ago
  This might be true for big projects, but most smaller open source projects are a lot easier to get into and their maintainers are usually grateful for any useful contributions they can get.
  - vog 16y ago
    Even for big projects there are often good reasons for which they don't accept a certain contribution. The project maintainers usually have a broader understanding of the application, so more often than not, they find important flaws or coding style issues in contributed patches which the contributor has to address before the patch can be included. This is often perceived as bureaucratic and timidity against changes, but usually this is nothing more than a self-defense against subtle bugs, unnecessary complexity and vanishing readability, for which big projects are more vulnerable than small projects.
- abrahamsen 16y ago
  It obviously depends on where you start. I'd say you should start by contributing to a small project, where there usually isn't a lot of red tape to learn. And most large projects have extension mechanisms, so if you want to contribute to a large project, make a small stand-alone extension. Or contribute to someone else's stand-alone extension.
- simonw 16y ago
  GitHub has massively reduced the amount of work needed to start contributing to a project - click "fork", make your changes, send a pull request. That said, actually learning how to use git in the first place is quite a bit of work.
  - zumda 16y ago
    While I agree that Github has made it easier, it is still not easy. First they will reject because of some subtle formatting error. Then they will reject because you didn't document it enough (or wrong). Then they will reject because your tests aren't done the way they do it. Then they refuse it because you merged and didn't rebase. There are hundreds of reasons why they won't pull your changes. This doesn't apply to small, single dev programs. They are usually, at least in my experience, pretty happy that someone wrote a patch, but the big ones are really, really bad.
lovskogen 16y ago
For me, as a designer, contributing to Open Source is a great exercise. But as gkoberger states, it's hard to get 'a foot in the door'. And getting your GUI implemented is also a long process. How could this be made more lucrative?
danio 16y ago
Nice advice for the original target audience of people with lots of spare time who have already sorted out where the rent money is coming from. For the other 90%+ of us not so relevant.
- tfh 16y ago
  This could be very helpful for those who have not already sorted out where to get rent money to get the job they want.
  - danio 16y ago
    If people don't have rent money they don't have the time to work on open source as they are too busy working (i.e. in a short-term job unrelated to developing software). So the advice only applies to people who are financially stable but also have spare time such as students.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
vog 16y ago
I think the author is missing an important point: You should also contribute to Open Source projects because you are using them. This is the most natural motivation for contribution. You care about the project not just because it's cool and Free Software and you want to exercise. You mainly care because you're using it everyday - be it your favorite game or an important library (like jQuery, Qt) you use at work. It is often most sensible to fix the bug where it appears, instead of working around it in your application. And with Free Software (aka Open Source) you can simply do that, without having to ask anyone for permission. Getting this bugfix/improvement into the official version is a separate step. But it is worth the effort, because the alternative is to maintain your patches separately from new versions of the library. Or, worse, to maintain workarounds for bugs in the library that might or might not be fixed in future versions.
jasonkester 16y ago
If you have spare dev cycles, I'd say it's in your better interest to build a software product that will make you money. You get all the advantages the author talks about, with none of the disadvantages that the commenters here point out. You get income, and you get something concrete you can point to when it comes time to interview for your next job: "I built and designed somerandomthing.com from scratch. It's built on the mZungu stack and handles peak loads of 14k requests per second. Check it out when you get a chance. It pays my rent."
- pmjordan 16y ago
  Agreed. I find it admirable that people can produce code for purely altruistic purposes. I wish I had the time to do that in between my work that pays the bills and my work on my own project that will hopefully soon earn some money. At the same time, I do end up using a lot of open source software as part of that work, and when I have issues with it, I do submit fixes back to the project. Sometimes they are accepted (in some form), sometimes they're ignored. This isn't overly time consuming, and if nobody did it, I'd be spending a lot more time fixing bugs myself. Likewise, I occasionally open-source stuff I build that happens to be reusable. As far as I can tell, none of that code is widely used, but on the off chance that someone is looking for something exactly like it, it might save them some time.
  - davidw 16y ago
    > purely altruistic purposes Nah, it's because it's more fun to work on open source code! I don't work on stuff that's not fun or not interesting in some way, so there's definitely always an element of self-interest.
- daleharvey 16y ago
  I would like to mention building something that makes money, and writing open source code are not mutually exclusive.
- twymer 16y ago
  When building something to make you money, you're not working with a large group of other developers or "giving back" to any community.
oceanician 16y ago
I think in some ideal world I'd like to see all companies that benefit from oss donate some employee time back to the community. Ultimately it's mainly the business community that benefits, rather than the coder who are typically paid just around the cost of living. So, why can't more businesses allocate time to contribute back?
CraigBuchek 16y ago
Here's my answer on HOW to contribute to Open Source, if you're not a programmer: http://www.granneman.com/techinfo/linux/contributewithoutcoding.htm http://www.granneman.com/techinfo/linux/contributewithoutcod...

59 points by hgarg 16y ago

nadam 16y ago

"Open Source projects offer you a chance to work on something that you want rather than something that others want you to work on." As far as I am concerned starting my own project is more what I want rather than fixing bugs in other people's complicated code which code might also be philosophically very alien to me. To take compromises there is my day job. To work on cool things I start my own project/startup.

aaronblohowiak 16y ago
This lecture was given to students to start to understand how real software development works and get an edge on their classmates while applying their technical skills.

gkoberger 16y ago

The biggest problem with contributing to [edit: established] Open Source projects is the barrier to entry. As someone who gets paid to work on a popular open source project full time, I can tell you it's often way harder than it's worth to get involved. You need to download and get the code running on your computer, and configure everything to run correctly. You need to learn the ins and outs of how everything works. You need to install and learn about the code the project depends on (and, most projects will have numerous vendor libraries). You need to get acquainted with the main developers on IRC, so you don't step on any toes. You have to learn how they do bug ticketing, and you need to find bugs you can do. And your first code review? Trust me, it'll be painful. It's not easy to get started. If I left my job today, would I continue to contribute? Sure. But only because I already have a foot in the door, and know my way around. All that being said, I truly believe universities should require students contribute to at least one open source project- it's a great learning experience, and the projects and their users benefit from the volunteer labor.

motters 16y ago
This might be true for big projects, but most smaller open source projects are a lot easier to get into and their maintainers are usually grateful for any useful contributions they can get.
- vog 16y ago
  Even for big projects there are often good reasons for which they don't accept a certain contribution. The project maintainers usually have a broader understanding of the application, so more often than not, they find important flaws or coding style issues in contributed patches which the contributor has to address before the patch can be included. This is often perceived as bureaucratic and timidity against changes, but usually this is nothing more than a self-defense against subtle bugs, unnecessary complexity and vanishing readability, for which big projects are more vulnerable than small projects.
abrahamsen 16y ago
It obviously depends on where you start. I'd say you should start by contributing to a small project, where there usually isn't a lot of red tape to learn. And most large projects have extension mechanisms, so if you want to contribute to a large project, make a small stand-alone extension. Or contribute to someone else's stand-alone extension.
simonw 16y ago
GitHub has massively reduced the amount of work needed to start contributing to a project - click "fork", make your changes, send a pull request. That said, actually learning how to use git in the first place is quite a bit of work.
- zumda 16y ago
  While I agree that Github has made it easier, it is still not easy. First they will reject because of some subtle formatting error. Then they will reject because you didn't document it enough (or wrong). Then they will reject because your tests aren't done the way they do it. Then they refuse it because you merged and didn't rebase. There are hundreds of reasons why they won't pull your changes. This doesn't apply to small, single dev programs. They are usually, at least in my experience, pretty happy that someone wrote a patch, but the big ones are really, really bad.

lovskogen 16y ago

For me, as a designer, contributing to Open Source is a great exercise. But as gkoberger states, it's hard to get 'a foot in the door'. And getting your GUI implemented is also a long process. How could this be made more lucrative?

danio 16y ago

Nice advice for the original target audience of people with lots of spare time who have already sorted out where the rent money is coming from. For the other 90%+ of us not so relevant.

tfh 16y ago
This could be very helpful for those who have not already sorted out where to get rent money to get the job they want.
- danio 16y ago
  If people don't have rent money they don't have the time to work on open source as they are too busy working (i.e. in a short-term job unrelated to developing software). So the advice only applies to people who are financially stable but also have spare time such as students.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

vog 16y ago

I think the author is missing an important point: You should also contribute to Open Source projects because you are using them. This is the most natural motivation for contribution. You care about the project not just because it's cool and Free Software and you want to exercise. You mainly care because you're using it everyday - be it your favorite game or an important library (like jQuery, Qt) you use at work. It is often most sensible to fix the bug where it appears, instead of working around it in your application. And with Free Software (aka Open Source) you can simply do that, without having to ask anyone for permission. Getting this bugfix/improvement into the official version is a separate step. But it is worth the effort, because the alternative is to maintain your patches separately from new versions of the library. Or, worse, to maintain workarounds for bugs in the library that might or might not be fixed in future versions.

jasonkester 16y ago

If you have spare dev cycles, I'd say it's in your better interest to build a software product that will make you money. You get all the advantages the author talks about, with none of the disadvantages that the commenters here point out. You get income, and you get something concrete you can point to when it comes time to interview for your next job: "I built and designed somerandomthing.com from scratch. It's built on the mZungu stack and handles peak loads of 14k requests per second. Check it out when you get a chance. It pays my rent."

pmjordan 16y ago
Agreed. I find it admirable that people can produce code for purely altruistic purposes. I wish I had the time to do that in between my work that pays the bills and my work on my own project that will hopefully soon earn some money. At the same time, I do end up using a lot of open source software as part of that work, and when I have issues with it, I do submit fixes back to the project. Sometimes they are accepted (in some form), sometimes they're ignored. This isn't overly time consuming, and if nobody did it, I'd be spending a lot more time fixing bugs myself. Likewise, I occasionally open-source stuff I build that happens to be reusable. As far as I can tell, none of that code is widely used, but on the off chance that someone is looking for something exactly like it, it might save them some time.
- davidw 16y ago
  > purely altruistic purposes Nah, it's because it's more fun to work on open source code! I don't work on stuff that's not fun or not interesting in some way, so there's definitely always an element of self-interest.
daleharvey 16y ago
I would like to mention building something that makes money, and writing open source code are not mutually exclusive.
twymer 16y ago
When building something to make you money, you're not working with a large group of other developers or "giving back" to any community.

oceanician 16y ago

I think in some ideal world I'd like to see all companies that benefit from oss donate some employee time back to the community. Ultimately it's mainly the business community that benefits, rather than the coder who are typically paid just around the cost of living. So, why can't more businesses allocate time to contribute back?

CraigBuchek 16y ago

Here's my answer on HOW to contribute to Open Source, if you're not a programmer: http://www.granneman.com/techinfo/linux/contributewithoutcoding.htm http://www.granneman.com/techinfo/linux/contributewithoutcod...