This document provides guidance on contributing to open source projects. It begins by discussing the authors' initial misconceptions that contributing only involved finding bugs and submitting patches. The document then outlines important steps like knowing your interests, choosing an accessible project, understanding the codebase and community, and dedicating regular time. Key advice includes starting with beginner tasks, getting familiar with code review processes, and iterating on patches with testing. Overall, the document advocates learning about open source through practical involvement and recommends the authors' experiences contributing to projects like Sketch-UI, Mozilla and KDE.

1. Contributing to Open
Source 101
X C o n f G u r g a o n ' 1 4

2. 2
Our Journey

3. 3
What we thought it was
● Find a project
● Find bugs
● Send Patch/Pull Request

4. 4
Why?
What?
How?
When?

5. 5
Why?
The reasons we wanted to contribute

6. 6
● Awesome workplace
● A lot of activities
● Challenging projects
● Something missing!
Why?

7. 7
Our reasons
● Give back to the community
● Become Immortal
● Reach
● Be part of a change/Be
disruptive
● Network
● Become a better developer

8. 8
Other Driving Factors
● Profile
● Fame
● Travel
● Solving a problem
● Improving solutions

9. 9
What?
Next Steps...

10. 10
(Now) What?
Umm.. Where do we start...

11. 11

12. 12
Inception
● We tried learning about a lot of
projects.
● Rust, Servo, KDE, Firefox ...
● Even tried learning the languages
● Failed. Frustrated.
● Work: 0 Time: A lot

13. 13

14. 14
Why did we fail?

15. 15
#Fail
✗ Had never used it
✗ Only judged by impact
✗ Picked projects with giant learning
curves

16. 16
Seeking help
● IRC
● Blogs
● Meetups in Delhi/NCR
● We met RMS!

17. 17

18. 18
Know Thyself

19. 19
Know Thy Interests
● Pick something you use
● Something you care about
● Something that will annoy you if it
doesn't work

20. 20
How?
Techniques and Tools

21. 21
www.openhatch.org

22. 22
Know Thy Project
● Use it. And keep using it.
● Understand the itch
● Talk to contributors on IRC/IRL
● Talk to users
● Read Mailing Lists
● Needs and Wants

23. 23
Funny picture
about learning
curves

24. 24
Starting Point
● KDE: 'Junior Jobs'
● Mozilla: 'Mentored Bugs' and 'Good
First Bugs'
● Github: Tags ('Easy' etc)
● Take your pick

25. 25
Know Thy Code
● Obtain source code
● Build
● Run tests
● Play with it. Explore.
● Read wikis

26. 26
Tools pic
Wrong tools mishap

27. 27
Know thy tools
● Start with no tools
● Explore tools for specific problems
● Ask seasoned contributors

28. 28
Know Thy Community
● KDE: Active user and developer
community in India
● Mozilla: Developers vs Contributors
● Sketch-UI: Scratch your own itch

29. 29

30. 30
Know Thy Etiquettes
● Volunteers usually have other jobs
● Give descriptive feedback
● RTFM
● Spell-check

31. 31
All set? Now get
your hands dirty!
Another funny
pic here. Omg.
Kill me. Now.

32. 32
When?
Where is the time to do anything at all !!

33. 33
Spend Thy Time
● Find company
● Make it a regular thing
● Doesn't always work the way you
thought it would
● After-hours
● Weekends

34. 34
www.codetriage.com

35. 35
CODE!
Getting familiar with the codebase

36. 36
It's not going to
work the first time.
And it'll be a while
till you get the
hang of things.

37. 37
Code -> Review
● Follow code guidelines
● KDE: Review board
● Mozilla: Bugzilla
● Properly formatted patches
● Build bigger features in increments.
TEST!

38. 38
Check in
● Run tests locally
● Mozilla: Run on Try Servers
● Write a beautiful commit message
● Rinse, Repeat
● Get approval on patch
● Check In final patch

39. 39
Nope.
- Albert Einstein
on reading our
first patch to
Firefox

40. 40
Immortality

41. 41
Pitfalls
● Too scared to ask questions
● Didn't dedicate time

42. 42
What we thought it was
● Find a project
● Find bugs
● Send Patch/Pull Request

43. 43
(11)2
to (11)10
Rules
<Insert Awkward Laughter Here />

44. 44
(11)10
Steps
● Know Thyself
● Know Thy Interests
● Know Thy Project
● Know Thy Code
● Know Thy Tools
● Know Thy Community
● Know Thy Etiquettes
● Spend Thy Time
● While true: (Code →
Review)
● Check-in
● Achieve Immortality

45. 45
Learnings
● Contributions != Code
● You can start your own project if
you have an itch that can't be
scratched with the help of TWers

46. 46
Nagging Questions
● Why do we not see people regularly
contributing? (Outside work related
software)
● Why the aversion to free software?

47. 47
We ended up
contributing to:
Sketch-UI, Mozilla,
KDE

48. 48
What's next?

49. 49
https://github.com/pagekite/mailpile || www.mailpile.is

50. 50

51. THANKS
Paras Narang
@parasnarang
Rishab Arora
@spacetime29