How do you find open source projects you want to contribute to? I'm trying to find projects I'm interested in but don't really know what to do.

Look for topics/languages you’re interested in. Or what you’re friends are working on possibly

@ScribeOfGoD I don't really have programming friends outside of devRant tbh but one of my friends is in IT and wanted me to work on a project he uses from time to time.

@ScribeOfGoD friends....🤣

I have colleagues. I have relatives. Can't say I have friends.

@zlice I know that feel 😓

I have seen a few Linux converts go back to Windows in the last year. I just tell them I'll see them in 5 years.

Now most of them are complaining about Windows 11 and I just smile and nod.

The community is aging out and most the young sys devs really don't understand the why's and only want to replace with "easy".

Unless something big happens community driven Linux distros will dry up in 20 years or less.

I discovered Google Summer of Code today and the applications close in like 5 days. Hopefully by next year I will have more experience and tools under my belt I could contribute a project to an organization. But that seems like an awesome program to get introduced into open source.

Fixing bugs or maintenance is often a good source to get started doing pull requests.

Libs: Do niche features still work? Did you need to figure out the hard way how a function works and think it should be documented better? Could dependencies be updated? Add guides and/or examples.

Selfhostable sw: Does the dockersetup still work. Are instructions incorrect or assume wrong/outdated packages/distros?

As with all of this, most projects are small ones and people have a lot of things to do. So keep in mind they might take many days to reply, have to get into the software logic again or straight don't notice the pr if not very active on gh anymore.

So please:
- Check the activity on the repo and their profile to see whether they may take longer to respond.
- Include a detailed explanation of your changes and why.
- Do the little things like polishing (e.g.. create the pr as a draft first) so they don't need to propose/do a lot of fixes.
- Always be nice, no matter what is wrong.