this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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Hello,

I have been thinking about making the jump towards Open Source, not just using OSS but also contributing to it.

First, some OSS projects/apps I know of are Peertube, Lemmy (right now using Voyager app), Mastodon, Matrix (used to use the Element app, gave up because I realized it was too hard for those around me who got used to Whatsapp), OpenStreetMap (through OrganicMaps), Jellyfin, and Actual Budget, Godot Engine, Luanti, GrapheneOS... I might know more, but those are the ones I remember right now.

Second, I have some basic experience with programming (mainly Java [haven't learnt GUI yet tho], SQL, and C# for Unity videogames), but no experience entering an already created codebase yet, let alone making changes and sending them (and I admit I might need to get some practice with Git), so it is pretty intimidating. Do you have any advice about it?

Third, I'd like to hear about projects you find interesting or useful. Not neccesarily to contribute or even use them myself, but I'm interested in which other projects there are out there.

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[–] iByteABit@lemmy.ml 5 points 8 hours ago

You've already done the first step, which is actually using FOSS software. That's the only way to get real context on what you're contributing to and find issues or lack of features that bothers you or is incredibly specific to your system or use case, and fix something that maybe would not have come up otherwise or no one would have time to get to.

Filtering issues by 'Good First Issue' as someone said is also a really good way to find tasks that are relatively easy to get your feet wet with a codebase. Don't feel bad about taking on too many of them, it's better that someone does them all and gains enough experience to become a regular contributor, than the rest of them collecting dust until someone else like you shows up.

Don't worry too much about not knowing X or Y language, the great thing about being into FOSS is that you get to become a multilingual developer, which is very eye opening and educational as opposed to sticking to a language like Java and never realizing the limitations it has or even the benefits it has relative to other languages, and use that knowledge to be a better engineer overall. It's easier to learn new languages nowadays, plenty of guides and docs to find, and AI can help for more specialized and context aware questions, just don't fall into the trap of letting AI do the job for you, you would only be fooling yourself.

Also don't underestimate the value of small contributions like documentation updates, translations, creating issues, etc. You don't need to come up with a PR for every issue you create, just finding things and keeping active is enough when you don't have the time or energy to go the whole way.