Since I was in college, I was aware of the open source technologies available on Github and other platforms as well. I started contributing to open source in 2018, Hacktoberfest basically, back when they used to accept 5-6 contributions from their participants and gave out swags after completing those contributions.

What intrigued me about open source tech was that I had the ability to make changes to a software that could then be used by user's worldwide. I could also fork them and then play around with those technologies catering to my needs. I practiced the forking of repos analogy in my previous organization where I had to develop an ERP system. So went on to explore on Github and found one named ERPNext developed by Frappe. Open Source is amazing!

Looking for Projects to contribute to

At first, contributing to open source is confusing and overwhelming as there is no fixed path like school teaches us, and no kind of hand holding as well. Being open source means people took the initiative of working on their projects out of passion and not because they just want to improve their portfolio or something like that.

So us as contributors shall have the same spirit. Hunting orgs or projects to contribute to, can be done by using Github's Topics section and then hunting according to one's interests and tech stack that one is proficient in.

One can also look for popular source projects on a site like opensourcealternative.to. There are a lot of other sites like this.

How to look for good first issues

Most of the open source projects often have a label of good first issue. What it means is, that first time contributors can get started with their code by contributing to that good first issue.

However the competition for these kinds of issues is immense as people just search for labels with good first issue over Github and then contribute as they please. So if one genuinely wants to contribute to an open source project, one has to look for issues that are easy. Its a tedious process, but not a lot of people do it.

This is how we look for good first issues for an open source project.

Submitting your first PR

While submitting your first PR for any particular issue, its necessary to follow the contributing guidelines for a particular organization/project. Its also necessary to communicate with the PR reviewers who may or may not request changes for the PR one made.

If making changes in code, a small tip from my side, use VSCode's search toolbar to look for a specific component or line of code, and then you can make changes in them. I also use a React developer Chrome Extension which helps me figure out what component do I have to look into in order to make changes to it, its really helpful.

Conclusion

I know contributing to open source at first seems to be hard. But once you push yourself in that direction, the process gets familiar and one gains confidence. Its all about embracing the discomfort.

I hope this was helpful. Godspeed!