7 secrets of successful Open Source developers

by Vaclav Tunka

Senior Software Engineer

Red Hat JBoss Middleware

Why should you care about OSS?

• Using your talent for something useful.
• Helping people around the world.
• Learning from the experts.
• Open Source opens career options.

How the best OSS contributors do it?

Passion

Persistence

Focus

Motivation

Community

Luck

Mastery

How to choose OSS project?

• What are you passionate about?
• Trending technology.
• Proven community.
• Can you combine with uni projects / thesis?

Low hanging fruits

Mentoring

• Start a bachelor / diploma thesis for us.
• Find a mentor in the OSS community.
• People on university might be contributing too.

Communication

• Asynchronous communication FTW!
• Developer mailing lists / forums
• IRC / chat
• Jira / Bugzilla

How to behave in OSS community

• Watch the development list / IRC.
• Introduce yourself - offer help.
• Start with small fixes / isolated tasks.
• Prove yourself.

References

• Presentation by Dimitris Andreadis
  • http://bit.ly/1EyUcnF

• Climber
  https://www.flickr.com/photos/mariachily/3382799213/

  Cycling
  https://www.flickr.com/photos/puliarfanita/3296070443/

  Focus
  https://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewrennie/4689273816/

  Jump:
  https://www.flickr.com/photos/41040538@N05/3782483177/

   

Refs cont'd

• Cycling mass
  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/USA_Pro_Cycling_Stage6.jpg

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_USA_Pro_Cycling_Challenge

  Ace
  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ace_playing_cards.jpg

  Yoda
  http://scornfulconcept.deviantart.com/art/YODA-286862163

Questions?

Thanks for being awesome audience!