A Beginner's Guide to Open Source

Getting started in Open Source can seem daunting, but it doesn't have to be! In this talk we'll cover some easy ways to find the perfect project for you to contribute to, great ways to make your first contributions, and some other ins and outs of Open Source that are handy to learn before diving in (spoiler alert - it's all about the people)!

Transcript

1. A Beginner’s Guide To Open Source
2. Open source software is software whose source code is available for modification or enhancement by anyone.
3. A brief history of Open Source
10. Why Open Source?
12. Working together, we can build the tools that we need to do anything!
14. Transparency is important!
16. Why contribute to Open Source?
17. Giving Back
18. Learning
19. Community
20. What makes for a good open source project?
21. First and foremost, a good owner/core team
23. A good community
24. An active project
25. What makes for a good open source project for beginners?
26. Something that isn’t too big
27. Something that hasn’t been around for too long
29. Something with helpful tags
32. What sort of contributions can I make as a beginner?
33. Anything, really!
34. Think about what you want to get out of it
35. Documentation
36. Refactoring
37. Bug fixes
38. New features
39. Non code contributions to open source projects!
40. Help triage issues and come up with bug reproductions
41. Help with managing the community
42. Translate documentation
44. Write blog posts or record screencasts
45. A few open source stories
58. Some “rules” to live by
59. 1) You don’t need to ask anyone’s permission to contribute – just do it!
60. 2) If you see something, say something (politely)
61. 3) In general, be nice J
62. Devon Estes Twitter - @devoncestes Github - devonestes