Giving Back to Open Source

Something that I have always loved about Open Source is anyone from the other side of the world can give a solution to a daunting problem or a bug in your software project that you have been thinking for weeks.

And it’s just gets better everyday.

There are currently so many projects out there that need help. A little help from one’s side be it solving a bug or helping with the documentation goes out a long way.

And the best thing is

It is Open to All. Anyone can contribute and make it a better one.

So going by it, DigitalOcean like every other year organised their very own Hacktoberfest 2017.

People can work on any open source public projects be it labelled under Hacktoberfest or not. So new contributors or starters on GitHub , this is the place where you can start working on. And for Mentors or Project Maintainers, I must say this is the only big time when your project can get a lot of stars, and your project stats just shoots up within a few weeks 😃.

How was my experience ?

Well, I started contributing even before Hacktoberfest, about almost 9–10 months ago, when I officially started contributing to projects on GitHub.

Starting with small projects and ultimately going for the larger code-bases, the journey was a hard one but it was undoubtedly fun.

Contributing

Owing to Hacktoberfest, I started contributing to various projects that I wasn’t that much intended to work on. Some included work on desktop applications or using some new languages like Scala.

Being a Mentor

I had already two or three projects that needed care and I wished that the code base improves with more tests and installation guidelines. But owing to college and sems, I could give little time to it.

But it was when I started labeling the issues under the project with the label Hacktoberfest, when things started happening. People from different parts of the world started working and helping me in my little project. There was one this guy from Ireland who contributed a big chunk of enhancement to a file that was breaking due to some unsolved bugs.

And this what I love the most in GitHub. People can start working on something that I left off and help me rebuild it ㊗️ . Everyone has different skill sets. Some are good with documentation, some good with writing fresh code while others good at finding non-trivial bugs inside the code. So when everything comes together, its only the best that happens.

Thanks to Hacktoberfest, new developers got an opportunity to contribute to open source software.

Stats for Hacktoberfest 2017

I must say Hacktoberfest 2017 was lit 🔥.

And what’s better when you get a Hacktoberfest T-shirt for 4 pull requests only. Yes, you heard that right, only 4 pull requests and you can win a Hacktoberfest T-Shirt !! 😉

I guess we will get to see Hacktoberfest once again in 2018.

Till then

Happy Open Sourcing !!! 💚