Open Source Contribution: A feeling from inside

Published On: 15 May 2014.By auriga.team@aurigait.com.

General

Open Source Contribution: A feeling from inside

I always wanted to contribute something to IT industry as most of the people do but it was very hard to decide from where to start. Finally I started by writing this small piece of article and hope my contributions will always increase day by day. Following steps can be followed to start contributing –

1. Idea of open source contribution:

While working on CMS platforms and frameworks, there are so many challenges. Developing features and simultaneously keeping the development objective alive is similar like collecting coins in temple run game and moving forward also. The idea comes in mind that there should be a weapon to add features in one push but here you can’t start making weapons. It is always better to obtain already made tools. You pickup from open source, use it and move forward to achieve your target. Here you realize that if people are helping me at every stage, why shouldn’t I pay back. This is the basic of creating open source for others.

2. What to contribute:

There are some questions you ask from yourself when you want to contribute something.

What are my area of expertise.
What features people often need in my area of expertise.
What features take much time to be developed.
Can I save others’ time to provide the ready made features to them.

If you are able to find out above answers, you are ready to do a good work.

3. How to contribute:

Most of the work is not only the coding. It is challenging that whatever you have made is worth to others. You have to ensure whether they are able to use it successfully.

Here is the step journey:

Find the problem
Make the solution.
Test & run it locally.
Document the solution in docs, massages, videos, slides etc.
Propose & explain the solution.
Present the solution in a package.

4. It makes you proud from inside:

Once you know you have made others’ task easier, helped them and your contribution is worth important for others , you feel awesome . This feeling makes two senses, you are capable of creating extraordinary things and second your open source contribution matters a lot to others.