Why Open Source? How one can contribute to Open Source?
Open source is a great way of getting real-time software development experience from the comfort of your home. Open-source contributions show or prove the skills you developed over the years.
- While contributing to Open source one must need not to be a pro, one must have a basic to medium knowledge of their tech stack be it Mobile development, Web development, Machine learning, DevOps, cloud, etc. Even if you know 30 to 40 percent then also you can contribute to Open Source. You can learn while contributing.
Before understanding the codebase of the project you are contributing to, first, use the product/project and after that go through the documentation, talks, workshops people have given on that particular project. The role of the community comes when you are stuck while contributing.
Finding an organization for contributing to Open source has two ways -
Top-down approach - In this approach, you find an organization that already uses the skills you know.
Bottom-up approach - In this approach, you first find an organization and then learn the skills that the organization is using.
Remember! Every contribution counts, it doesn't matter how small that contribution is even a minor fix or a document change.
So all in all first use the product then look at the codebase, interact with the community, find easy issues, good first issues, beginner-friendly issues.