

Ask HN: What do you look for in an open source project? - Lockyy

I&#x27;ve been looking to get into open source development for a while as a way to learn and gain a deeper knowledge of working on real projects.
However I have no experience of what to look for in a project before I dive into it, what should I look for?
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SEJeff
I can say this as a co-maintainer of 2 large projects (salt and graphite).

1\. Look for community ie: mailing list, irc, im, github, etc, etc

2\. Look at commit frequency. How often do they commit. Is the project
abandoned?

3\. See if the developers are friendly. Feel free to email / im / chat with
the developers. Ask what you can do to help.

Keep in mind contributing does not mean code code code. It can mean triaging
bugs, updating documentation, herding other community members towards the
right things, etc.

Hit me up with more questions if you want: jeffschroeder@computer.org

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J_Darnley
Contribute to one you already use. Why do you think you need to look for
anything else?

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ggchappell
I'd be interested in the environment: politeness, respect, abuse being frowned
upon.

I use the Linux kernel constantly, GNU Project software an awful lot, and Perl
now & then. Involvement in any of these strikes me as a bad idea. OTOH,
CPython is quite different.

~~~
J_Darnley
Okay, you have a point. I wouldn't want to join a mean community. Contributing
to those projects mentioned sounds hard but I don't know about a "bad idea".
Why do you think so? No "low-hanging fruit" does make starting out harder.

~~~
ggchappell
See my reply to raiph.

