Contributing to Open Source, It's Easier Than You Think

Using my own experience within the Salt community we'll go from making your first commit to an open source repository to being one of the top project contributors. Attendees will not learn about how to use tools, but how to interface with communities and push themselves out of their comfort zone to help contribute to their favorite projects.

Transcript

1. Contributing to Open Source, it’s Easier Than You Think Forrest Alvarez KISSmetrics
2. What I Am Not An expert programmer A professional technical writer Especially smart
3. Status of the Room How many people currently contribute? How many people would like to contribute?
5. The First Foray Openstack is cool I should work on that Confused how to contribute
6. 6 months later 3000 emails 0 contributions
7. Feel Familiar? No direction Lack of familiarity Confusion and frustration
8. Meet the team behind Salt Decide to try contributing again
9. First Steps Read through the documentation Hang out in the IRC Review existing issues
10. First Contribution
11. Next Steps Keep answering questions Document things people ask about all the time Create and resolve issues people encounter
12. Some Example Issues
13. A Pull Request
14. Do You Feel Better Now? How many people feel they could do this?
15. Current Status 6500 IRC messages in the last 5 months Top 25 contributors (#25) 101 commits, 2600 lines ++
16. Key Pain Points Lack of project knowledge Fear of rejection Lack of direction for where to start
17. Lack of Project Knowledge ? new = good
18. Fear of Rejection Are my commits good enough Will this reflect negatively on me Am I wasting other people’s time
19. Lack of Direction How do I get started What needs to be worked on Is this even an important aspect
20. Overcoming These Issues Learn about the tool, through use or research Realize that your contribution is appreciated Review issues and see what people encounter
21. Prior Discussion on the Topic DevOpsDays Atlanta 2013 Open space at Pycon 2014
22. Project Owners are Just as Lost Project owners want you to work on their project They want to help you get started They appreciate your help
23. What Makes a Good Project Friendly and welcoming community Very few open pull requests Active channels of communication
24. What Makes a Good Contributor Interest in the project and goals Desire to improve skills Ability to take constructive criticism
25. That’s All Folks IRC: forrest GitHub: Gravyboat Twitter: failvarez Website: Hungryadmin.com