Open Source Contribution Checklist

A guide to help you remember important things when contributing to an open source project

Contributing to Open-source projects is a good way to learn and build experience without having a full-time job. (You could make an open-source contribution to a full-time job by the way).

I have been contributing to open-source projects for over a year, and it has been an interesting journey over the last year. With valid collaborations and working on different projects, here are some of the checklists that I do when contributing to a new project.

Whenever you decide to contribute to an open-source project, you should ask yourself these projects to be sure that you are a good fit to contribute to the project.

License

The first thing to check in an open-source project is to ensure the project has the appropriate contribution license. Ask yourself, does the project have an open-source license? Is it actively accepting contributions?

Commit activity

When was the last commit history? The last commit history of a project is a major factor when determining the activeness of a project. You must have seen projects where the last commit history is over a year. Don’t think of committing to projects like that!!!

Issues

How many issues are in the project? When was the last issue created? Do maintainers respond quickly? Is there an active discussion? Are the issues recent? How often are issues getting closed? These are important questions.

Pull Requests

How many pull requests are there in the project? Without a significant amount of recent pull requests, there is no guarantee that the project is active and accepts contributions.

Contribution Guidelines

This is a must-have for every open-source project. This guide helps onboarding new contributors to make their first pull request. Without a guide on how to contribute to the project, new contributors remain confused about the project.

These are the basics, of the questions that need to be asked when contributing to a new open-source project, either as a beginner or an advanced-level software engineer.

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