Career & Leadership › Career Growth

Contributing to Open Source

Finding issues, following the guidelines and opening PRs.

Also known as: open source, OSS contribution

Contributing to open source means sending changes to a project that other people maintain. It’s a real way to learn how large codebases are organized, get feedback from experienced maintainers, and build a public record of your work.

Start with a project you already use. Look for issues labelled as good first issues or help wanted, and read the contributing guidelines before writing any code. Many projects describe how to set up, how to run tests and how to name a pull request.

1. Comment on the issue: "I'd like to take this. Is the approach in the description still what you want?"
2. Fork, create a branch, make the smallest change that fixes the issue.
3. Run the project's tests, then open a pull request that links the issue.

Maintainers are often volunteers with limited time, so a small, clear, well-tested change is more likely to be merged than a large one. Respond to review comments promptly, and thank people for their time.

The classic mistake is opening a large pull request without discussing it first. The maintainers may have a different plan, and the work can go unused. Ask before starting anything big. For other ways to show your work, see side projects.