|
> Before 2007, the way to participate in Open Source was fragmented. Each project had their own workflow, patches circulated in emails, issues were reported in a myriad ways, and if anyone wanted to contribute they had to figure out every project's rules. Don't you still have to figure out every project's rules? Being on Github does not impose coding guidelines, testing requirements, documentation requirements, contributor license agreement policies, project management and governance system, code review process, dispute resolution process, and so on. > Nowadays doing Open Source is infinitely easier thanks to you, GitHub. You've provided the tools and the social conventions to make those days a thing of the past. Nearly every time over the past 30+ years that I've wanted to fix a bug or add a feature to some open source thing I've been using, and been thwarted, it was never figuring out the workflow, or patch procedure, or issue reporting that did me in, or figuring out the project's rules. The big problem has usually been one or both of (1) the project has a bazillion files and it is not at all clear from the meager documentation and haphazard directory organization which are for the thing itself and which are for ancillary tools, and (2) it gets build errors that I can't resolve. |