

These kinds of tasks are a good way to get your foot in the door as a contributor to the project without trying to take on more than you can handle. Don't be afraid to start small: instead of trying to fix a major bug or rewriting an entire module, try finding things like documentation inadequacies or cross-device testing and patching, or even simple syntax errors and grammar issues (like this one from GitHub user mzgol). In fact, fear of being an inadequate programmer is often a reason why people don't get involved in open-source projects to begin with. Often, there are plenty of things you as a developer can do that don't involve being an extremely clever programmer. One of the most important things to understand when getting started with collaboration on open-source projects is to recognize your role. Today, we will discuss a few rules of the road for collaborating on open-source projects, and give you the knowledge and intuition you will need to get involved. But there are major benefits to getting involved in larger open-source projects, and GitHub is arguably the best place to start. Many large open-source projects have adopted GitHub as their primary home for collaboration and contribution.īut how do you join in and contribute to a project? Sure, you know how to use Git to track changes to files and push those files to a server. It provides a place for anyone with an internet connection to share code with the world for free (not to mention the robust supporting tools for source inspection and easy viewing of commit histories).

If you don't already know, GitHub is an incredibly effective way to collaborate on development projects.
