If it's free and open source and it's also software, it can be discussed here. Subcommunity of Technology.
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From my own experience:
That's pretty much how I've ended up contributing to a plethora of different stuff.
Yep. I've submitted patches to a few projects. JD GUI seems dead, there were issues regarding the same thing I fixed. Another Gradle plugin I submitted a fix for got merged pretty much right away. As quick as I would expect for people volunteering their time that is.
Actually, same here! I used to get overwhelmed by just the thoughts of contributing to GitHub projects too, because I think my code was kinda bad and I didn't want to get judged at. Whenever I thought about repo maintainers/reviewers, I always imagined that they would be all like Linus Torvalds, and I was afraid of getting shamed for my poor code, lol!
I was lucky because I had skills in drawing arts, so I started by contributing icons to an Android icon pack project, which didn't really require coding skills, and is actually something I know I can do. The maintainer of my first contribution turned out to be a very friendly and cool person instead of someone grumpy and direct I always had images of in my head! From there, I gradually learned about the tools and coding a project.
I think the truth is if you want to contribute, even when you think your code isn't up to standard, you really still need to start somewhere. If you don't feel any confident, start forking with a small project with some incomplete milestone that you know is something you can do, I think? Just remember that not all reviewers are out there to chew on your code, lol.
I don't think there's the one process, however, GitHub seems to be the most popular platform. There the process is usually the regular git branch/pull request workflow.
The best way to start would probably be, to simply look up where the project you're interested in is hosted/has its forum and then ask there. Some projects (like Linux) have a rather formalized process, while others (like many smaller, hobbyist tools) are rather lax.
I’m a developer myself and from my understanding every project have their own set or rules, policies and guidelines. No two foss-projects are necessarily the same.
Best thing to do is to find a project you like then look at their PR documentation, or maybe hit up someone who’s a regular contributor to that project.
I try to get involved with the smaller tasks first. Right now, I'm trying to help organize issues on lemmy and lemmy-ui. I mark duplicate issues, reply to ask for more info and so on.
Sometimes I also try to help translate a project.
On the software side of things, I usually just fork the project (given it's on github), and start poking around the codebase, try compiling it, maybe try to change a few things. When I'm comfortable, I'll look into the issues, sometimes they are marked as good-first-issue, and I focus on them first.
But any maintainer out there is happy to receive a pull request, so no need to worry about making an impression or being "allowed" to participate first.
Start by reporting bugs is a good start even for those who don't know programing, for developers many project have documentation usually on CONTRIBUTING.md or at the README.md itself, includes code of conduct, Pull Requests, Bug Reports etc...
Example for Lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md
Is just a link to docs
Here's a better example: https://github.com/honestbleeps/Reddit-Enhancement-Suite/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
Each project will have different standards to follow. It will depend on which you are interested in.
In addition to what others said,
There is also a fear of my own code being judged online.
Please don't worry about it. This is how you get better in your career/skills. You need other's judgement to think about your code and how you can improve it and your skills. :) Thats the huge bonus you get out of code reviews.
Something I find helpful in battling the mental issues I get from it is to just look at something green for a while or take a break. Also, confronting people in dms makes them more chill.
(I don't know what kind of hypnosis GitHub and GitLab use, but everyone seems to be more intense on these platforms)
I am also just trying to dip into Open source projects. I googled around and stumbled upon this. Maybe this might help you get started.
All the best!