How to start contributing to open source?

Hello :) I've recently made several contributions to react-native-video, even making it into the top 100 contributors list, and I was in the same position as you—never having contributed to open source before. Here's a repeatable approach I found helpful:

Find a Feature You Need 🎯

I recommend you start with a feature you personally need. For me, it was the ability to handle webvtt subtitles in mobile video players for overlaying data. I say this because, before I had contributed, it just seemed like there was SO much that could be done. Do I start with a bug? Oh, okay look, an issue for "first time contributors, thats me!; omg I have no idea whats going on?!".

Narrowing it down to a feature that I needed gave me both clarity and the motivation to get it done.

Engage with the Community 💬

Check if the project has a community platform like Discord or Slack. I found valuable guidance on Slack for react-native-video. They also might have a twitter/github discussions/reddit. Point is, they will likely have some method of communication, find it, and then join the party 🎉!

Dive into Contribution Guidelines 📄

Refer to the project's contributions.md for an overview of contribution expectations and how to get started. This can be hit or miss; but, its a good starting point.

Set Up Your Development Environment 🛠️

1. Fork and Clone: Fork the project and clone it to create an isolated environment. I personally did it like this because it just felt like too much, there was so much going on so I needed a way to remove some of the noise and drill down to what I wanted to change.

2. Experiment: Start with small changes in your forked copy, ensuring changes affect your project. For example, you just look at a class initializer that you know is going to fire and do a print statement. This helped me to learn how dependencies are built, pointed to, and managed overall.

3. Understand the Basics: Grasp the basic structure and coding patterns of the project. In my case, I needed to understand the flow from react native -> native; so, I just tried to make the absolute most basic function that would be called in react native and do something on the native side.

Learn by Doing 📚

Build a simple version of the feature in a standalone project. For example, I created minimal video players in Swift and Java to understand how they integrate with React Native. Depending on your feature, this could be quite intense method; but, I think the goal is just to get a sense of how does this thing work under the hood? Like, if this library didn't exist, how would I even do this?

Implement the Feature ✨

Figure out how to add your feature in the standalone project before applying it to the actual project. I did it this way because I wanted to have a reference point. Essentially, okay, here is a project where I know the feature is working as intended and now I just need to get it in this project but following their abstractions. So for example, they might have a way they do their events, like okay all events go here. So just slap yours in there and follow their patterns go with their style and I think it'll smooth things out.

Follow Contribution Protocols 📝

1. Communication: Engage with maintainers if unsure about procedures. I was able to get valuable feedback and even highlight some bugs as I went through the project. Normally you might have to dig to find who the active maintainers are if it isn't explicitly stated somewhere.

2. Observation: Look at successful PRs for guidance on branch management, commit history, and PR structure. My thought process was, okay these PRs get merged, if I just copy how they did it, I can find success too.

3. Documentation: Include a detailed PR with a summary, explanations, and visual proofs(screen shots/video).

Final Touches 🛁

1. Linting: Ensure your code meets project standards by running provided linter scripts.

2. Await Review: Be prepared for feedback and possible revisions. For this, I would refer to Alex guide on communication. I had some healthy back and forth before I was able to get my features merged.

Note on Rejection and Feature Requests 🚫

Your PR might not always align with the project's direction. Consider starting with a feature request issue, indicating your interest in implementing it.

You can take a look at the PR I made here

Hope this helps!

Hi,

I contributed to Microsoft Windows Terminal Open Source Project for about 7 months. Legends say (Alex) that if you land 5 big PR's they'll give you a job.

"You got no recent work experience". A recruiter told me they rejected me cause I had no recent experience. Open Source can help get your resumé running with fresh experience.

I build a feature to Enable Unfocused Acrylic in Microsoft Windows Terminal A deeply sought after feature request upvoted by ∼ 100 people:

• Demo: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jaswir-raghoe_microsoft-activity-7111062782527033344-yMEw?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
• Issue: https://lnkd.in/eNDTBUrV
• PR: https://lnkd.in/e8qdUXQu

How I got into Open Source Software and started with Windows Terminal

It's hard for me to believe that the Windows Terminal had no unfocused Acrylic for about 3 years. Like it was waiting for me to get back.

I was there when Microsoft announced the Windows Terminal Open Source project in 2019. Only in 2023 after a 3 year career break I started looking into Open Source as a way to get my resumé running again with fresh experience. After a recruiter told me they rejected me cause I had no recent experience.

After trying out XUnit which didn't work out I started looking at some Open Source projects from Big Tech. This and Chromium Web Browser were projects that appealed to me. Ended up working on this. People here were more like me a workhorse: responded quickly, added much value, also setting a high bar for quality! This was refreshing after trying some other collaborations that didn't work out.

Connection

I think you need to get along with one of the maintainers not sure how to say it in English but in Netherlands we have this word "klik" it means you just get along with someone. These Big Tech repos can often be very daunting, so you'll naturally have lots of questions. I tried a bunch of open source projects, but in the Windows Terminal Project I had a "klik" with one of the maintainers this helped out a lot in getting up and running

How To Get A Big PR

I started with a small PR in a certain area of the codebase this helped me land the big PR, because I already had experience with this area of the code base the big PR became easier.

I haven't been able to get a Referral at Microsoft, they mentioned they wanted to see a longer track record of contributions. But with the AI boom and all, I have instead changed my focus on AI. And I don't regret it.

Doing a PR to Big Tech Open Source was good for my confidence. And is good to have on my resume. Mostly it thought me more about what developers at Microsoft are like, and that they weren't as impressive as I had expected.

You might enjoy the new course we just published! https://www.jointaro.com/course/become-an-open-source-master/ - it's a comprehensive answer to exactly that question, and I'd appreciate your feedback!