How do I start off getting involved in open source?

3 points by TheBurningOr 15y ago ↗ HN

I am a mostly-self taught developer, trying to develop my skills and it seems quite clear that getting involved with open-source projects is probably the best way to go about doing that, but I am never really sure where to start. I have accounts on the major OSS hosting systems and have checked out the code for a few projects I like, but beyond that, I feel kind of lost. Most OSS projects appear to me to be either abandoned, barely maintained, or so complex that I'm never even sure where to start. Does anyone here have any pointers or advice for starting off with programming OSS?

3 comments

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hippich 15y ago ↗

Decide what you like. Find OSS project about it. Work on it.

.. and follow rules in community.. prefix your questions with "Ask NH: ". =)

TheBurningOr 15y ago ↗

Ach. Yeah. Oops. I was so concerned writing the working of the question, that I neglected the most important part :P

pcora 15y ago ↗

fedoraproject.org would be a great place to start (i'm a fan) but there are lots of distros that are alive and launching new versions very often. ubuntu.com is another...

once you have an account, you probably wanna talk to someone about the code... there mailists where developers talk about what they are doing.

hope I've helped a bit.