Putting It All Together: Contributing to Open Source Projects

In most open-source projects, often left unsaid is how to effectively contribute within the accepted “societal norms” of a project. Contributions can take a wide range of forms: adding new features, bug fixes, documentation, and often just general feedback. In this session, we will review how an individual developer can contribute constructively to an open source project – with a specific eye on helping you contribute to projects from The Apache Software Foundation.

• Who is a contributor? Committer? PMC member?
• What is a contribution? Creating patches for review.
• “If it doesn’t happen on-list, it doesn’t happen.”
• Finding the right mailing lists for your project
• Review of issue tracking systems used within Apache
• Review of version control systems used within Apache
• Spotting and avoiding becoming a ‘poisonous’ person
• Scoping contributions to help reviewers
• Setting realistic expectations around feedback
• Legal paperwork to fill out once you become an Apache committer (What am I signing? Am I giving away all my rights?)
• Beyond being a committer…PMC membership, foundation member, etc.