Tips for brainstorming potential projects:
- What projects do you use and would personally benefit from?
- Is there an issue you're passionate about?
- Contributions don't have to be just code. Many open source projects are sorely needing better documentation (think of all the libraries you've used that could benefit from more/clearer examples), tests, and design.
Resources:
- CodeMontage: Open Source Projects with Social Impact https://www.codemontage.com/projects
- Code for America Brigade: Civic Applications You Can Deploy Now http://brigade.codeforamerica.org/applications
- 24 Pull Requests: http://24pullrequests.com/projects
- GitRec: Your personalized GitHub repo recommender http://gitrec.mortardata.com/
- Code Triage: Help Open Source Projects Most In Need http://www.codetriage.com/
- OpenHatch: Volunteer opportunities in free and open source software http://openhatch.org/search/
Feeling Overwhelmed? Try these:
- Quill uses open software and open content, and have clearly labled issues (look for "Level: Starter" and "1 - Ready")
- Try a bite sized bug on Open Hatch
Articles with advice for beginners:
- Beginner Friendly Open Source Projects, by Julie Pagano (@juliepagano)
- A Beginner’s Guide To Contributing To Open Source, by Natasha Murashev (@NatashaTheRobot)
- The Beginner’s Guide to Contributing to Open Source Projects, by Andy Lester (@petdance)
- 7 open source projects to cut your teeth on (and the ones to avoid), by Rikki Endsley (@rendsley)
- Getting Involved in Open Source Projects, by Matt West (@matt-west)
- Open Advice: what 42 prominent contributors wish they knew when they started contributing to open source, edited by Lydia Pintscher (@lydiapintscher)
What to look for:
- good documentation on how to contribute, including how to setup and run
- good test coverage (so you know you don’t break shit)
- a community (google group, IRC, forum etc)
- labelled issues
- positive communication in pull requests
- Contributor Covenant
New to git? Go through this tutorial instead http://try.github.com/
- Work on the issue, then submit a pull request. There may be some back and forth - don't get discouraged!
- Seek out a mentor if you need help submitting a pull request (a mailing list, a meetup office hours, us!)
- Make some public projects for yourself
- Blog/tweet about it!
- Go to open source socials. Know of an upcoming event? Share it on the etherpad.
Write/Speak/Code 2016 Suggested Projects
Referenced by language and includes project descriptions. Android, C/C++, C#, Frontend (HTML & CSS), Go, Java, JavaScript, iOS, Node, Objective-C PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Shell, SQL, Swift Plus Content, Documentation, & Translations, Design & UX
Ruby
- https://github.com/tylerpearson/civic_aide - gem to interact with Google Civic Info API
- https://github.com/CodeMontageHQ/codemontage - website to feature social good projects
- https://github.com/empirical-org/Empirical-Core
- https://github.com/activate/ActivateHub
- https://github.com/codeforamerica/ohana-api
HTML/Markdown
- https://github.com/WriteSpeakCode/website - Static Site generated via Middleman (Ruby tool)
- https://github.com/sursh/talks-i-want-to-give - List of talk ideas for my future self (thx Sasha)
Javascript
- http://p5js.org/contribute/ - A successor to Processing
- https://github.com/playcanvas/engine - 3D game engine
- https://github.com/photonstorm/phaser - JS game
- https://github.com/jquery/jquery-mobile - jQuery mobile