It will help you to improve your skills or how to understand how to start this journey!
New edition, check it out!
Open source is a common topic in my life and also in my blog, but I already written on my social about this book and is time to announce that now is public!
I started writing this book after the Fosdem 2019 and when my experience inside the Mozilla Reps Council ended.
Basically I wanted to write my experience in the open source world, with my style and all the stuff that I learned on community management, project management, tech speaking, mentoring, development, localizing and also project maintainement.
During the years I saw a lot of people asking me how to contribute, where to start and so on, and I was feeling that it was time to write something about it.
One of the first thing that I learned is to document, not really to improve my English (in the book is better thanks to Elisabetta and Takeshi) but because contributing means also simplify the life to others.
I am kind of bored about people talking: how much is cool the open source, what you can do with open source, why is profitable the open source, how much is cool a community etc.
We need to talk about how to contribute or how to do the open source stuff.
Diversity and Inclusivity in Open Source
Diversity means also simplify the onboarding and lowering the learning curve to improve the inclusivity.
We need more people on the back that create the ecosystem that we are consuming every day without giving back anything, if not promotion. How we can fight the rest of the IT ecosystem if we don’t improve the quality of the project? How we can introduce more the “open” philosophy in other area of the world from the knowledge to the science as example?
Those are some questions that motivated me to write in the previous 7 months a book. Lead by Example is something that I am trying to follow, because I cannot complain of something if I don’t try to change it on first.
Open source deserve more people that “si sporca le mani” or “with dirty hands” in a project, not on management level but on the other parts. We cannot lead something that we don’t know how works in the detail.
I am not the biggest contributor, the most valuable, the most professional or the most cool. I am only that want to change the things because we need more developers, localizers, marketer etc. that want to make the difference.
In other words You don’t deserve to be only a consumer of the open source world.
Yes I am talking to you!
This book is open source under the GPLv3 (because I like the license and I don’t care to use another one), it is free (or with a donation) and you can do it whatever you want with that.
I wrote that book on my free time, during vacation, traveling or at home after the working hours at the office. It was something that my fingers wanted to do with a computer to change the perspective and help others.
Not because I was bored to get always the same questions but because every revolution start with something that change the previous paradigm.
As I change my point of view, workflow, paradigm during the years to do it better, also you can do the same.
Just change your point of view about Open Source
Just go to Leanpub and download the book, relax and discover a new way of doing things that can change the world.
If you don’t want to leave an email or an account to Leanpub you can download the book from https://github.com/Mte90/Contribute-to-opensource-the-right-way/releases/tag/2019.1. Don’t forget to watch the repo for new version or use Leanpub for that.
Do you think that the book was helpful? Share the voice for a better open source ecosystem.
If you think that I missed something you can always go to GitHub and open a ticket (I am looking for feedback).
Do you think that is book was written for me (the author)? You are right, when I want to do something I try to do it because I can do it. Like contribute to the open source ecosystem.
I am open to any feedback, because I want them to be a better person and also a better contributor.
It’s your turn
A lot of people is surprised or appreciate my enthusiasm when I talk about Open Source, this is like my early testament that explain why.
Just click on this cover and enjoy what I did, to give back to the community that changed my life. The Open source community.
Thanks
The book already include that part but I want to say thank you to Elisabetta, Takeshi and Marco that helped a lot on the review of the book.