The Open-Source Industry Has a Big Problem, and Here Is How I Want Help Fix It
My master plan revealed
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Getting into OpenSource is hard.
Think about it, it’s 2022 and getting into Open-Source is not only “not trivial” but actually hard.
This is not acceptable.
OpenSource powers a great portion of the software that is used across the globe, but we still have no proper way of dealing with an OSS workflow — at least not in a standard way.
Let’s see if we can do something about it.
Getting into OpenSource is not trivial
Mind you, there are multiple ways of getting into it, but they’re not good enough — at least not in my opinion.
People can help you
On one side, you have people who do all they can to help. People like Eddie Jaoude who runs a huge community of developers trying to actively help each other.
On the upside, a community of people that help each other is a fantastic way to get in. Maybe ask specific questions and get recommendations. Some people from those communities might write articles, and share videos, they’ll give you all you need to get started.
But having the info doesn’t mean you can find the right project to help with. Because finding a project is not as easy as opening Github and clicking on the first recommended project. What happens if that project hasn’t been updated in the last year? Would you want to spend your time on it? Or what if it’s filled with reported issues, but they’re not attended to by the repo’s owner? Finding the right repo is not a trivial task.
There are some apps
There are apps out there that show you the door, like GoodFirstIssue where you can get a list of issues labeled as good-first-issue . This is a common practice in some repos to show newcomers where they can get started .
This is a fantastic way to start.
But what happens afterward? What if those projects are stale and not maintained anymore? We’re back to the problem from before. How do you know these repos are good for you?
