

Ask HN: How to get to “commit” on a good open source project? - alanl

I want to get involved in an open source project, but I thought I'd ask the HNers for some advice first.<p>Here's what I have come up with as my initial to-do list:<p>(1) Find an interesting project that has some momentum.<p>(2) Study the project src.<p>(3) Learn the source control environment. (e.g github)<p>(4) Follow the forums, and answer some questions.<p>(5) Find a bug I can fix.<p>(6) Find a feature I can add.<p><i>What else should I do?</i><p>I am also interested in advice on human behaviours and politics in OS development communities, (i.e.)<p><i>What kind of things should I expect to see in succeeding/failing OS project communities?</i><p>Thanks in advance.
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placer14
While i'm new to OS contributing, I've found dealing with communities
(especially in IRC) in a way that discourages vampires
(<http://www.slash7.com/pages/vampires>) and promotes friendly urges to "learn
more" are generally appreciated if handled diplomatically.

I'm attempting to get more involved in the CakePHP community myself and am
taking the tact of contributing to smaller supporting projects (their
documentation) and lurking in the IRC chat to understand other people's
problems, learn from them and get to know the core developers.

Edit: And never have the expectation that you'll ever get to work on core
development. (Not that you can't, but this mantra will help to keep your
motivations altruistic.)

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alanl
Cheers, I hadn't thought about contributing to documentation as a good
starting point.

I had assumed I wouldn't be contributing core code, my motivation is simply an
urge to code more outside of my day job, and to get some good/fun experience
doing it.

