Michael Parducci
11/29/21
Social Software
Professor Tusman
Joining an open source project
An open source is a computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder can change, study, use, and distribute the software and its source code. It gives any capable user the ability to participate online in developing the open source software. Some of the advantages to working in open source is that there is a range of support options that are available for open source since many of them are free and there are fewer bugs and faster fixes since the open source software development helps catch and fix bugs early. It’s also developed by a group of talented and skillful experts that make improvements, new versions, and features to the software every now and then. Some of the disadvantages to working in open source is that the developer provides indemnification and warranty as part of a standard license agreement since they fully control and copyright the product and some of these projects can be tricky to set up and use. Even though there are other user communities that can help you with the open source, you can’t count on them 100 percent of the time since it’s not their job to do so. My thoughts on open source software is that it's very interesting and great to use them, such as its security, what licenses to use, being able to participate in the open source software and learning new codes especially if you're trying to get a software development job. My thoughts on the community is that while it’s not perfect they do help out with the open source by giving their opinions on how to fix certain issues, showing them new codes, and how to fix bugs faster. My thoughts on how it’s built is that they’re built really well since we have talented and skillful users that help us try to make good open source software.
The open source project that I decided to join is firstcontribution/first-contributions. While looking through this project I learned that it's a guide to help beginners contribute to open source projects. The license that it uses is MIT License which I’m familiar with. It's a short and simple permissive license with conditions only requiring preservation of copyright and license notices. The code of conduct is taking an interest in fostering an open and welcoming environment as we pledge to make participation in our project and our community a harassment free experience for everyone. A way that I could contribute to this project is by making a fork, clone, edit, and a pull request in order to contribute, I can add another language that they might have missed, I could add another tool that they put in the tutorials that they don’t have, I can test the sites and those that aren’t working, I can make an issue to inform them of it, and I can spread the word about this project to users who are starting to contribute to projects. You can contribute in multiple different languages but English is usually the main one and everyone that contributes in this project is more than happy to help with your questions. As long as you don’t deem inappropriate behavior that is threatening, offensive, or harmful you can work on this project as much as you want. The community that I’m working for is first-contributions and I’m working for them because I want to help others that are contributing projects like me to have an easier time doing it. Some additional info I have is that it has some issues such as how the Hindi translation contains broken links, there should be subtitles in videos for those who can’t understand different languages, and to add git flow articles. I see myself contributing by stating that some of the languages aren’t translated correctly, add some updates to the README, and fix the links that they give in the other tools tutorial. A question that I have is if there's a limit to the number of contributors for this project since there are over 30,000 users contrinuting. My next step will be to continue to find ways to contribute to this open source project.