Contributing to open source

Are you interested in contributing to open source software projects,
but unsure how to get started? With a focus on the R software
ecosystem, I’ll describe open source software development, provide
motivations for contributing to open source software, give some advice
for getting started in open source, and detail some of the technical
steps for making a contribution.

I gave this talk at the Greater Cleveland R Group on 2019-08-28: https://www.meetup.com/Cleveland-UseR-Group/events/263391227

Transcript

1. Contributing to Open Source John Blischak Greater Cleveland R Group 2019-08-28
2. About me Postdoctoral Scholar, Dept. Human Genetics Reproducibility with R Markdown and Git See jdblischak.com for more details
3. What is open source software?
4. Basics of open source software ▪ Anyone can inspect, modify, and redistribute the source code ▪ Anyone can run the software for any purpose ▪ (Optional) Collaborative development ▪ Requires approved open source license
5. “Free” vs “Open Source” ▪ The Free Software Definition from the Free Software Foundation ▪ The Open Source Definition from the Open Source Initiative ▪ ”…nearly all free software is open source, and nearly all open source software is free.” – Richard Stallman
6. Pros and Cons Pros ▪ Widely available ▪ “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” – Linus’ Law ▪ No vendor lock-in Cons ▪ No instant customer support ▪ Difficulties in long- term maintenance and sustainability
7. R is open source ▪ Most CRAN packages are open source. Only 11 specify the field License_restricts_use
8. It’s already free, so why contribute?
9. Learning ▪ Opportunity to learn directly from experienced software developers ▪ Contributing to something used by others instead of working on an assigned example project
10. Networking ▪ Be a part of a community ▪ Meet others with similar interests
11. Prioritize your own interests ▪ If you want a specific feature or need a particular bug fixed, you are the most motivated to get it done ▪ Can be much quicker than waiting on others to do it for you
12. Contributing
13. Support other users ▪ Answer questions on Stack Overflow or RStudio Community ▪ Write a tutorial or blog post ▪ Try to reproduce bug reports
14. Give recognition ▪ Cite the software in academic papers and other official reports ▪ Share on social media
15. Financial support ▪ Support a project: R Foundation, Foundation for Open Access Statistics (FOAS), NumFOCUS ▪ Support a developer: Patreon, Buy me a coffee ▪ Lobby for your company to support open source (Tidelift, Quansight) or purchase enterprise versions of open source products
16. Build community ▪ Organize and/or attend community events ▪ Give a talk at a user group or conference
17. Writing code or documentation ▪ Requires learning the development tools used by the project ▪ Version control software, e.g. Git, Mercurial, SVN ▪ Code hosting platform, e.g. GitHub, R-Forge, Bitbucket, GitLab
18. GitHub is popular for R devs
19. What is Git? ▪ Tracks the changes made by each contributor (think Word Track Changes) ▪ Logs each change with a unique ID (think ”Version history” in Google Drive) ▪ Requires message
20. Fine-grained control of edits ▪ Edit code file(s) ▪ $  git  add ▪ $  git  commit ▪ $  git  push Analogy inspired by Greg Wilson
21. Collaboration via email
22. Collaboration on GitHub Fork Pull Request
23. Connecting to GitHub Fork Pull Request $  git clone Your computer $  git push
24. Example Pull Request octocat/Spoon-Knife GitHub Help: Fork a repo GitHub Guides: Forking projects
25. How to find projects ▪ Search for R repositories: language:R ▪ Search Issue labels – label:help-wanted – label:good-first-issue
26. Submit your first Pull Request ▪ https://github.com/jdblischak/git-for-science
27. More advanced topics ▪ Feature branch ▪ Add tests ▪ Contributor License Agreement (CLA)
28. Advice
29. Start small ▪ To learn the technical and social aspects of contributing to a project, start with a small contribution like improving the documentation
30. https://firstpr.me/
35. Assume the best in online interactions ▪ Tone of voice is hard to decipher for text-based communication ▪ To be safe, first confirm that a project has a Code of Conduct
36. Compare yourself to past you ▪ Long-time contributors will know the reasoning for every quirk in the code base ▪ This can easily inspire Imposter Syndrome ▪ As you continue to participate, remind yourself how much you have personally learned over that time period
37. Due diligence ▪ Read the README and any FAQs ▪ Read the contributing instructions (CONTRIBUTING.md) ▪ Search past discussions in Issue tracker or forum
38. Additional resources ▪ Contributing to Open Source on GitHub for beginners by Kent C. Dodds ▪ https://24pullrequests.com/ ▪ Producing Open Source Software by Karl Fogel ▪ How to Contribute to Open Source by Open Source Guides ▪ Your first open source contribution: a step-by-step technical guide by Jen Weber ▪ The Beginner’s Guide to Contributing to Open Source Projects by Andy Lester ▪ The Definitive Guide to Contributing to Open Source by Piotr Gaczkowski
39. Questions?