There are many ways to contribute to Open Source projects, depending on the project and what sort of contributions, if any, it is open to. There are financial contributions, bug reports, feedback, a thank you / letting the project maintainers know how you use the project, promoting the project to others, documentation improvements, code improvements, helping with infrastructure, verifying bug reports... its not just coding, and some of these you may be able to do with little or no time involved. All are forms of contribution. Not all Open Source projects are open to all of these, some aren't open to any of them (except perhaps promotion). So it is best to get familiar with the project by checking the site, docs, trackers, etc or maybe reaching out to the maintainers if you still have questions before jumping in.
Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source projects?
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Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source projects?
#12Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source projects?
#13I use FOSS in my personal computing needs which heavily intersects with my professional interests. Using 3rd party (FOSS) exposes me to bugs, issues with documentation, problems running things on esoteric hardware, security issues, eventually performance issues. Because of this I often need feedback from maintainers and I'm at their mercy for how fast my issue is resolved. Supplying a patch, giving feedback for issue…
The idea that senior engineers need public commits to be even considered for a job seems a little extreme to me. There are myriad reasons why an extremely competent senior engineer might not have public commits.
The lack of public commits does not signal whether or not someone is a competent senior engineer.
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source projects?
#14I do it a few times a year because many open-source softwares have glaring bugs. This is true in the JS/TS world, at least.
I don't know how you can avoid doing it at all, unless you're just messily working around issues in your codebase or leaving a TODO or item in the backlog to fix it in the distant future. (Which can be a better use of time sometimes of course.)
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source projects?
#15I have contributed work I've done in the context of paid employment. Very very occasionally I do so outside of work (maybe I use a tool at home, it doesn't work properly for what I want, I patch it and send a PR upstream).
My motivation to do so is if everyone puts in just a little bit of extra effort to contribute upstream we can get many people making small patches. It's nice for a contributor to see folks care (as opposed to just complaining of issues).
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source projects?
#16I use FOSS in my personal computing needs which heavily intersects with my professional interests. Using 3rd party (FOSS) exposes me to bugs, issues with documentation, problems running things on esoteric hardware, security issues, eventually performance issues. Because of this I often need feedback from maintainers and I'm at their mercy for how fast my issue is resolved. Supplying a patch, giving feedback for issue…
Big corp I work for will not allow me to write single line of code for open source projects. I might leak something confidential this way. The reality is not black and white like you try to paint it. Heck I had problems with leaking confidential information when supplied electrical diagram with mechanical drawing for one of the suppliers.
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source projects?
#17My motivation has usually been to add features/fixes that *I* would consider useful for my particular use cases, and most times it's for software I use in my personal time or personal projects.
Expecting to get paid for your first contributions to open source sounds, to me, like the wrong motivation.
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source projects?
#18Yes by using them thereby giving the developers reason to get out of bed.
More seriously; no. The license gives no warranty for the software, or potential issues I encounter. If the developer would take more professional responsibility there, I might feel like funding or contributing somehow. But if their approach is this is free stuff no strings, my approach is freely take and provide no guarantees in return.
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source projects?
#19I make incidental contributions, usually of the form of fixes to bugs I encounter or extensions of function that I need.
My motivation is saving others the ass-ache I just went through. There’s no reason in my mind that I should have a fix and not share it, especially after all of the lift/savings I've gotten over the years from emacs, Linux, apache, svn, git, etc.
Re: Ask HN: Do you contribute to open source projects?
#20I used to but the number of projects I use that enforce CLAs is ever increasing and I don't want to run to a lawyer every time I open a PR. My employers have been more than happy for me to contribute but lawyers aren't free (and I haven't worked somewhere with staff lawyers, yet).