The Contributors Army

gistfile1.md

tl;dr we're lazy, we're coders.

Let's make use of that.

• We don't like to start off new projects and write all the booooring boilerplate
• We like to fiddle with code and fix it
• We like recognition
• We're quickly bored

Hence, I present to you my idea:

The Contributors Army

Every month, we choose a popular open source project. For the sake of the argument, let's say popular = >50 stars.

The goal of every participant is to fix a bug on this project, with code. Most of the times it's going to be having a PR merged in. Sometimes it could be having a patch merged in.

Advantages:

• We get to learn how projects work
• The projects get to fix some bugs
• We get stuff to put on our CVs
• We don't create any boilerplate, only fiddling with code
• We don't get bored on a project since we always switch to a new one
• #swag

And the biggest advantage of them all: we get a new name. A badass name.

The Contributors Army

Here could be one of our first projects, in which instead of contributing we just write stuff from almost scratch. There is this project, a minigame, completely written in a currently not working java. We could, without the use of tools, translate that to javascript, trying not to change anything: use the same methods and all, then make a repo in which we enhance the code to make it better, and another in which some of us will continue. If there are about 8 of us it shouldn't take more than 3 days to do the translation

@towc Sounds interesting, but perhaps a more active project would be better? Something that's being used today?

Count me in

I've found this project and believe it would be a good candidate to contribute to. Especially since it is a point of controversy for the room.

Reasons I think we should contribute:

• This project is (like it or not) extremely widely used and has room for improvement, as well as ample easy to find issues.
• This project is written in C, but we have all used the end-result of this C and so it is an interesting opportunity to learn about the inner workings and relate them to the end-result we are used to.
• This project and it's code are well documented.
• This project has standardized coding standards.
• Users can even contribute to the documentation which may make things easier for the "noobs" to contribute anyway even if they don't feel up to par.

Reasons we might not contribute:

• Personal bias (that's fine).
• This project does not use github directly as others do.
• This project is too popular for our army's taste.
• Jhawins suggested it.

I also recommend contributing to PHP-src. I propose a patch removing all source files.

Where do I get my badge?