It's time for your first PR
This post has been imported from my previous blog. I did my best to parse XML properly, but it might have some errors.
If you find one, send a Pull Request.
TL;DR
If you’ve never issued a PR, now, it’s the best time to do it for the first time.
Whys
If you think that issuing a PR is not for you, please read the following Whys and issue your PR then :)
Fame
The weakest argument goes first. How cool is to say that I’m the contributor to XYZ. Open Source Software has a strong position in developers’ minds so if you’d like to impress someone for any reason, this can be the way.
Fear of being ridiculed
When you issue a PR, it is reviewed. You may consider sending a PR to do not get ridiculed (in Linus style). The thing is, that laughing at your contributors doesn’t pay off. From a maintainer perspective, if people drop off, you have more work to do, as no one is willing to handle registered issues or make meaningful changes on your own. Maintaining a good relationship with contributors is a thing that works the best.
Learn from the best
Sometimes you’d like to ask a famous developer about a possible improvement to their product or just verify some technical thought. How about being given their full attention and learning some of their expertise? PR is a great way to get both at the same time. Just write your idea in the code instead of a vague human language and share it as a proposal. You’ll get it reviewed it for free and your code for sure will be a beginning of a meaningful discussion.
CV
If none of the above work for you, think about your CV and the fact that asking for OSS contribution references is getting more popular this days. Your changes to publicly accessible projects are the best way of showing your potential.
If you’ve never issued a PR, it’s the best time to do it for the first time. Just book an evening or two and make the positive impact on the OSS environment.
Comments
It's good to mention that first timers should not pick the hardest issue to be solved in the OSS of their choice. Some repos have 'first timers' label that is used for issues that are fairly easy to be done.
Also those are a good read before the first PR:
https://yourfirstpr.github.io
http://www.firsttimersonly.com
Regards,
Paweł Łukasik
by Paweł Łukasik at 2016-08-22 07:18:21 +0000
