How to Kickstart Your Open‑Source Journey: Find Easy Bugs and Contribute Today

For the past five years I have been involved with the Durgapur Linux User Group and contributed to many open‑source projects. I contribute because sending a patch or pull request that millions use is incredibly rewarding.

What Is Open Source Software (OSS)

Open‑source software has publicly available source code that can be modified and redistributed under various licenses. Reading a few lines of code can be more valuable than reading hundreds of pages of documentation.

How to Get Started

First, pick the programming language you know best, then look for projects that interest you. Sites like Open Hatch let you filter bugs by language, and Mozilla offers a similar feature.

Finding Easy Bugs

Finding an easy bug can be challenging for beginners, so here are some curated resources:

Fedora : The Fedora Easy Fix page lists beginner‑friendly bugs and provides maintainer contacts. Repository: https://github.com/fedora-infra

Mozilla : Use whatcanidoformozilla.org to get project suggestions based on your language. Bugs Ahoy categorises bugs as Easy or Mentored across projects like JS Engine, DevTools, and Firefox OS.

KDE : Look for the Junior Jobs tag. Getting started guide: http://techbase.kde.org/Contribute

OpenStack : Beginner bugs are called “low‑hanging fruit”. Start here: https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/How_To_Contribute

Wikipedia/MediaWiki : Easy bugs are labelled with simple tags. Getting started: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Gerrit/Getting_started

GNOME : The Gnome‑love tag marks beginner‑friendly bugs. Newcomer tutorial: https://wiki.gnome.org/NewcomersTutorial

Apache : Over 140 projects with newcomer guides at http://community.apache.org/newcomers/index.html

Python and Django

For Python developers, start with the official developer guide: http://docs.python.org/devguide/ . Django’s contribution page provides mailing lists, IRC channels, and easy‑fix listings: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/internals/contributing/ .

http://www.whatcanidoformozilla.org/

http://www.joshmatthews.net/bugsahoy/

https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/How_To_Contribute

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Gerrit/Getting_started

https://wiki.gnome.org/NewcomersTutorial

http://community.apache.org/newcomers/index.html

http://docs.python.org/devguide/

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/internals/contributing/