10 Reasons You Should Contribute To Open Source Projects

Active participation in open source comes with many benefits and invaluable experience. This is a great exercise for those looking for career growth or an opportunity to start learning.

Here are some benefits of open-source contribution and why you should participate today;

1. Advancement in your career

Open-source software provides an opportunity to practice your programming skills. Writing documentation, identifying issues, and fixing bugs inevitably boost your career. A junior developer can also learn to write readable and maintainable code.

2. Become a better communicator

By joining a community of like-minded people and participating in open-source projects, you learn to give suggestions, explain problems clearly and communicate because of the level of cultural diversity.

3. Mentorship from more experienced developers

As a member of an active open-source community, you get to work with like-minded people and learn from and gain feedback from more accomplished and above-average programmers.

4. Enhance your technical skills

Contributing to free and open-source projects trains you, to conform to the norms, rules, and best practices associated with the project. You also become better at interpreting other people's code or understanding how codebases work.

5. Grow your network

By joining an open-source community, you gain new acquaintances, learn from them, and exchange ideas as well as broaden your professional horizons.

6. Get job offers

The benefit of joining an open-source community is that visitors to the Open Source project you contribute to can offer you a job or employment. In the same way, it can also improve your career prospects.

7. Enhance your portfolio and resume

Gaining experience in open-source software can help you secure employment. A hiring manager is more likely to recruit a developer who actively participates in open source than a more certified candidate with no open source experience.

8. Asynchronous collaboration and remote work experience

You gain remote work experience and learn how to work on a project more efficiently as a team when you are part of an open-source community.

9. Gain credibility and recognition in the technology industry

Generally, open-source contributions build your reputation as a great developer. Recognition from the open-source community can also motivate you to improve your skills to make a greater impact.

10. Become a better person

Getting involved in an open-source project exposes you to a multicultural environment. This enables you to become a better individual as you learn to be empathetic, thoughtful, and tolerant.

Thanks for reading! If you have any follow-up questions, feel free to ask in the comment section.