Open Source Projects have supported Users throughout the world and revolutionized Digital Knowledge. Contributing Code is the best way that a User can make returns to Open Source. This is also a great space to learn, practice, and gain valuable practical experience. Many companies offere open source projects. One largely untapped areaof open source projects is for adult companies. This is because many programmers choose to avoid working with adult dating apps or adult websites. However, contributing to a project for a free sex site like Meet and Fuck UK could land you a job and if nothing else great experience in a unique niche. Adult apps and websites are a great source for projects, but there are also many others. This article helps potential Contributors on — How to get involved with Open Source Projects.

What is Open Source & GitHub?

Open Source is a valuable method of software development that is at the same time transparent and collaborative. The special advantage is that the creators disclose the Source Code, and allow the Developers the freedom to download and view the Code. The Developer can debug the program, create and add new features, and change or manipulate the project to suit the objective. The Licence for this is available openly to any Developer. These projects are developed in conjunction with the website, GitHub. GitHub provides repositories where Developers can store and share their project work, and collaborate with other Developers to lead a single project to its objective. Registration with GitHub opens the doors to other similar projects hosted in the website; suggesting new features; and even contributing to one’s own code. GitHub being the most popular such website, newcomers can be helped better here, with suggestions and solutions. This article is a Guide on How to get involved with Open Source Projects.

Projects Available

GitHub website can be used to select an open-source project that will suit the Developers ambition and target. GitHub hosts a vast number of repositories. In 2013 itself, GitHub announced that it had reached 10 million repositories. So the steps to contributing to Open Source Projects can be as follows:

  • Register with GitHub, and create own GitHub account.
  • Choice of subject is next. Familiarity with the subject makes it easier to contribute. So it’s a good idea to visit well known open source projects first, such as Bootstrap and JQuery. One can navigate to their “Get Involved” page (or “Contribute” page), and check out if they host their code on GitHub. One may find a project that one is already familiar with.
  • One should immediately reject projects with whose language one is unfamiliar with, as this will only take up more time in gestation. A specific language search can be performed, perhaps using “language: java” or “language: csharp” or similar.
  • Currently trending projects can often create the necessary inspiration for choosing a project to contribute. Here, GitHub is invaluable, as it maintains profiles of the most trending projects for inspection. The searcher may find exactly what he desires to contribute here.

File Search

Though there is freedom in how the projects are presented, GitHub is structured in a particular way, and the search must take this into account. Some common files exist, which should be studied before selecting the project to be involved in. Some of these common projects are:

  • README.md: This file enumerates the structure of the project, details of its construction and owner’s address and contact data.
  • LICENSE.md: License conditions are important details which the Contributor must first understand and accept, before getting involved in a particular project. Open Source does not mean free licensing, and conditions set may vary from project to project. If License.md cannot be located, Readme.md should be consulted for Project License Number. Using a search engine like Google will help the potential Contributor to find out the fine details of that particular project, and whether it is binding or not. As a last resort, and if the project is really to the Contributor’s liking, he can contact the project owner for clarification.
  • CONTRIBUTING.md: This is a file that the larger projects contain, which gives the Contributor all the details and guidelines he requires to find answers to his queries and Code contributions. So this is essential to read carefully, if given.

Getting Involved

There are two steps here:

  1. Raising an Issue: The issue is the particular problem or area which the Contributor feels he can improve on. This objective of contribution may follow conventions, which maybe delineated in the Readme.md or Contributing.md files.
  2. Contributing Code: In GitHub a ‘pull request’ needs to be made in order to contribute code, which is the main objective of the Contributor.
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