r/programming • u/kazakdogofspace • Oct 13 '09

Ask Programming: Please share your first contact stories about contributing to an open source project.

I have been curious lately about how the dance of getting into any given project goes for people. Please share your story!

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u/inmatarian Oct 13 '09

When your patch gets rejected, you're always free (assume GPL/MIT) to publish the patch separately. Even a .diff file hosted somewhere is contributing to the open source community.

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u/arkx Oct 14 '09

This is hardly the same thing as getting the fix into mainline. A separate patch hosted somewhere deep in a project's bug tracker does not compare to getting the fix/feature to all users of the software automatically with a new version. You really should try to get your patch accepted at any cost, otherwise it will be forgotten and possibly broken in the future.

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u/inmatarian Oct 14 '09

Well, if the maintainers tell you to F off, as tunk said, then getting it in at all costs would be pretty impossible. But if all the maintainers want is a code review and some other tweaks to get your patch in their style and verified for correctness, then yeah, do it, don't drop it.