Contributing to Open Source

Presented at WordCamp Milwaukee 2012. I make the case for both why you should contribute to open source and how to get started.

Transcript

1. Contributing to Open Source Joel Clermont @jclermont Thursday, July 19, 12
2. About Me • Partner at Orion Group • PHP, JS, .NET, Ruby, iOS, (Lisp?) • Organizer of Milwaukee PHP User Group mkepug.com • Organizer of MobileMKE meetup.com/MobileMKE Thursday, July 19, 12
3. Goals for today • Why should I contribute to open source? • What types of help is needed? • How do I make a meaningful contribution? Thursday, July 19, 12
4. Why? What’s in it for me? Thursday, July 19, 12
5. The altruistic reason • Give something back to the community • How much does a WordPress license cost again? Thursday, July 19, 12
6. Commercial CMS licenses Thursday, July 19, 12
7. Thursday, July 19, 12
8. The selfish reasons • Make your own life easier (fix a bug, improve docs, etc) • Scratch your own itch (build something entirely new) • Resume/career booster (good for freelancers too) • Get experience and become a better developer Thursday, July 19, 12
9. Selfish reasons > Altruistic reason • But who cares? Everyone benefits Thursday, July 19, 12
10. What? Not just code Thursday, July 19, 12
11. Neckbeard and CompSci degrees are optional Thursday, July 19, 12
12. Help wanted • Documentation http://codex.wordpress.org/Codex:Contributing • Translation http://codex.wordpress.org/Translating_WordPress • Testing http://codex.wordpress.org/Mailing_Lists#Testers • Bugs http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ Thursday, July 19, 12
13. More than just PHP • Mobile platforms are open source too • HTML / CSS / JS required for themes and plugins Thursday, July 19, 12
14. Help the larger WordPress ecosystem • Plugins • Themes • Utilities Thursday, July 19, 12
15. How? Ready to dive in? Thursday, July 19, 12
16. How to get started • Work on something that interests you personally • Follow the coding standards • http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Coding_Standards • Understand the community Thursday, July 19, 12
17. Communicate • Mailing lists • http://codex.wordpress.org/Mailing_Lists • IRC • #wordpress and #wordpress-dev on Freenode • Forums • http://wordpress.org/support Thursday, July 19, 12
18. Get involved with the broader community • Github • Attend events • Volunteer to speak Milwaukee PHP Thursday, July 19, 12
19. PHP Code Sniffer for WordPress • Simple fix, but incredibly useful Thursday, July 19, 12
20. Search Replace DB utility • Didn’t work with my wp-config setup Thursday, July 19, 12
21. Removing code feels good Thursday, July 19, 12
22. Learning something new Thursday, July 19, 12
23. Vulnero (v2) • Just started architecture/design Thursday, July 19, 12
24. Useful Links • OpenHatch - “training level” for open source • http://openhatch.org/missions/ • WordPress developer documentation • http://codex.wordpress.org/Developer_Documentation Thursday, July 19, 12
25. What next? • Start small, but start soon • Slides posted on joelclermont.com this evening • Contact me for help / questions • Twitter @jclermont • #devmke (freenode) Thursday, July 19, 12