How to contribute to 52°North Open Source Software
There are a number of reasons why you should get involved and various ways to actually do so. Have a look at the guide “How to Contribute to Open Source” to get started. It provides helpful insights.
The best way to get to know a software is to use it or – even better – to contribute to its development. Implement features that you need yourself: new software, code snippets, adaptations, extensions, etc.. Help others to solve their problems. Fix bugs and enhance the existing software. There are many ways to get started, from easy bugs to hard features.
The general pattern to contribute is to
- find a project on our GitHub profile that catches your interest
- identify an issue, a bug or propose a feature of general interest on which you would like to work
- fork the repository
- make your improvements (avoid larger reformatting of the code – this makes diffs hard to read)
- test your developments
- create a well documented pull request
- allow some time for review and discussion over GitHub (reviews might take a while)
- upon approval, our developers will merge useful additions to our open source software
If you are interested in providing code, you will need to sign our contributors license agreement (CLA). Follow the CLA step-by-step guide. If you have questions about this or our software licensing, please check our licensing pages.
The development of high quality software demands a lot of testing. Run the latest development code and provide feedback on changes as they occur. Report errors or possible improvements via GitHub issues.
Most of the software development related discussion takes place on GitHub in the respective repositories. You can also join or start more general discussions about our open source software or help to answer questions in our mailings lists.
Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program sponsored by Google that focuses on introducing developers to open source software development. 52°North has been an active mentoring organization since 2012 and there are always interesting projects related to our open source software on the agenda. See our dedicated wiki for more details.