Contribute to OpenSource

Question

Possible Duplicates:
How should I contribute to an open source project?
How to get involved in an open source project
How to contribute code back to an Open Source project?

I'm a Computer Science student, and I want to increase my programming skills. I'm using Ubuntu now and I want to contribute to an open-source project, but I don't know where to start and how to choose a project, and I don't know if I can start with the college skills that I have, so is there any thing that I should do before contributing to open-source or should I wait till I work and get some experience.

Programming Languages: C/C++, C#, Java, Python, PHP, JavaScript

Answer 1

Github or Sourceforge are great places to start. Find a project that is near and dear to your interests, learn it inside and out, and get into communicating with its developers. That, or do something like developing plugins for jQuery - in a sense you're contributing to a massive open-source project.

Answer 2

You dont have to contribute by writing code right away, many projects would love for you to help them write better docs and test their project. after you get a better idea about what is going on in the project, you can start writing code.

• dev.java.net is a good place to start for java projects
• sourceforge is a good place for everything in the world
• github has some nice newer projects (it being a fairly new site itself)
• code.google.com has some very good projects as well

Answer 3

Get in touch with your Ubuntu local community (LoCo). They know, how can you take part in the improvement of your OS. And choose a program that you like or use every day, and ask the developers on the programs channel about your help.

Answer 4

A lot of people start out by working on the documentation for a project. You could also look around collaboration websites and ask to see if there's anything you can do. There's many frameworks that could use plugins/modules or improvements to existing plugins or modules.

Answer 5

As is the usual advice, contribute to a project that you currently use and really like already. Start contributing with documentation, and when you really understand the project, start fixing some bugs and implementing some features for it.

Answer 6

Google Summer of Code is designed with the exact purpose of getting students to take their first steps into working with an open-source project.

While you might not want to participate in it, or wait until next year, most likely you can find some excellent ideas for things you can work on in major, interesting open-source projects.