5W1H talk about who and how of open source-who and how to participate in open source?

Who was the subject of Who "invented" open source last time. This time the subject is transformed, let’s take a look at who has contributed to open source after the invention of open source? As ordinary programmers, how can we participate in open source projects?

Many people think that participating in open source is a very high threshold. You must contribute through code to be a participant or contributor to an open source project. In fact, this is a big misunderstanding. An open source project is actually a community. There are various roles in the community. The roles of an open source project include Contributor (contributor), Committer (submit), Maintainer (maintainer), and User (user). Most people's understanding of participating in open source may be limited to the first two in a narrow sense, and the first reaction to this issue may be to directly participate in the development, which is to participate in the open source project.

User

In fact, in addition to the most direct Contributor and Committer, others can also contribute to the project in various ways. For example, users of ZenTao project management software participate in the ZenTao open source project as a User. The use of ZenTao, marking, recommending, submitting bugs, and providing feedback on the use of ZenTao are all participations in open source projects. And contribution.

For example, in the development of the Linux kernel, there have been 24,000 developers participating in the development of version 5.9. Yes, they were all participants in this open source project at the time.

Contributor

The code, documentation, and works of open source projects are all created, tested, used, discussed, and optimized by members of the project community. These processes can be divided into various tasks, requiring different skills, different levels of participation, and different levels of technical expertise. Therefore, if you want to participate in an open source project and become a true contributor, there are many activities to choose from. For example, a pull request was issued for the project and merged into the project, testing and reporting or fixing bugs, writing and updating software, writing or updating documents, translation, recommending the project to others, organizing offline activities, etc.

Committer

Committer usually accumulates various contributions during the daily operation of the project, and is nominated and recognized by the core maintenance team of the project. Eventually, it becomes a committer from general contributors and has higher authority in open source projects. They have code warehouses to write Developer with operating rights. In general, Committer has the authority of the code repository to submit code directly, and usually has the right to review other people's code to decide whether it can be merged and submitted. As a participant in an open source project, being able to become Committer is an honor in itself, and it is also a very important reason to encourage everyone to continue to participate and keep the community healthy. For example, becoming the Committer of Apache may be the small dream of many open source project engineers.

Maintainer

Users who are committed to a project and promote the development of the project. It is often the initiator or owner of the open source project, or it can be a team. They have the highest decision-making power in the open source project, and determine the function, strategy, and development direction of the project. In the organizational structure of the Apache Software Foundation, each project is managed by an independent PMC (Project Management Committee), PMC members nominate and elect new committers (Committer) for the project, and PMC members are also responsible for nominating and voting for new PMC members, etc.
Ways to participate in open source

直接参与开源项目的开发
参与开源项目的测试
为开源项目提交Bug、修复Bug
开发开源项目的插件
参与开源项目推广
参与开源项目的文档翻译

In addition to the above-mentioned ways that developers participate as individuals, they can also participate in open source projects in commercial companies, so that while contributing to open source, they can also get material rewards without falling into an economic dilemma. Many commercial companies are the initiators or major participants of open source projects. For example, the recently popular OpenHarmony is an open source project incubated and operated by the OpenAtom Foundation. Huawei is the initiator of the project. So the personnel of Huawei who participated in this open source project are also participants in the open source project.

The term open source originated in the context of software development and is used to specify a specific method of creating computer programs. However, today, "open source" can be understood as a broader value-open communication, collaborative participation, rapid prototyping, transparency, meritocracy, and community-oriented development principles. The spirit of open source still exists in other fields. The spiritual essence of open source is "I made something, everyone can use it!" Such a spirit of Geek, but also the desire to make the world a better place.

If you find it terrible, make it perfect.