Contributing to Open Source will change your Life – Complete guide

In this guide, I’m going to describe some amazing benefits of contributing to open source. Well, open-source projects are specific types of projects that you are free to extend, customize, or even sell to your customers. You can contribute to open source in plenty of ways. You can contribute to someone’s else projects or you can also start your project.

A Short overview of what I’m going to cover:

Here is a list of topics we are going to cover in this guide:

● Benefits of contributing to open-source

● Common vs uncommon ways to contribute to open-source

● My final thoughts (Summary)

Benefits of contributing to open-source

Contributing to open-source comes with several benefits. That could include some monetary benefits and some non-financial benefits. Please note that non-financial benefits are not directly related to money, but they indirectly contribute to financial well-being. Let’s explore some of the advantages of contributing to the world of open-source.

Portfolio Building

That is the number one benefit for beginners in the field of software development. I’m sure you are already aware of the term “portfolio”. If not, then I’m here to explain. Well, think of a portfolio as a medium used to showcase what you have made. It serves as evidence that you have experience in the skills you are claiming. In this current era, TRUST is one of the most important things because it is currently in shortage. So when you do contribute in open-source using GitHub then that contribution is reflected in your profile and it helped you in building your portfolio. You have something to share when eventually you will apply for the jobs.

Showcasing Skills

Contributing to open-source helps you show your skills to other people. Other people could be your hiring managers of the company, freelance clients, or maybe some like-minded people who want to build a network with you. In this way, you can show what skills you have. Wait a second. Are we missing something? Well, till now I didn’t tell you where you can find some good open-source projects to make contributions to. Well, there are plenty of sources out there but I will recommend Open Source Collection because on that site you can filter the projects based on your preferred programming language or framework. For example, if you work in PHP then you can apply the filter of Technologies and select PHP from the drop-down list then all the projects you see will be based on the PHP language.

Opportunity to get high-paying jobs

Here comes a benefit involving some direct financial values. Yes, you will get the opportunity to get high-paying jobs by contributing to open-source projects. Well, how is that possible? The hiring managers of big tech companies review your GitHub profiles to know about your coding standards to make sure they align with their needs or not. If it can’t align then they can analyze whether your code is well enough so that they can train you. Now in that analysis, if you have some good contributions then your profile could impress them.

Common vs uncommon ways to contribute to open-source

There are a lot of ways to make your contribution out there. I have divided these ways into two categories, primary and secondary. Of course, the primary ones are the common ones because most people go for it. On the other hand, there are secondary ones that I call uncommon because they are not as common as the primary ones. Let’s put some light on them.

Common ways to contribute

The most common way used by many programmers is to actually contribute to the source code of the project. You can do that in plenty of ways like fixing bugs and entertaining new feature requests. Other than contributing to someone’s else project you can also start your own open-source project and host the code on a platform like GitHub. Also, if you want to list your open-source project on an online directory of best open source projects then you can submit your project to Open Source Collection.

UnCommon ways to contribute

It includes plenty of ways like making documentation and tutorials about installing the project. You can also do code reviews and testing of the code contributed by other developers. Lastly, you can do some project management tasks like issue tracking, roadmap planning, coordinating contributions, etc.

My final thoughts (Summary)

Contributing to open-source projects offers many benefits, including both financial and non-financial advantages. Making a portfolio through open-source contributions establishes credibility and showcases your skills to potential employers or freelance clients. Additionally, active participation in open-source projects enhances your chances of securing high-paying jobs by demonstrating your coding standards and expertise to hiring managers. Also, we discussed some common and uncommon ways to make contributions to the open source.