It's 2022 and getting into Open-Source is still not easy. This is not acceptable. Mind you, there are multiple ways of doing it, but they're not good enough (IMHO).
There are people who do all they can to help.
- They create communities of poeple that help each other. Others write articles, share videos, give you all you need.
- But having the info doesn't mean you can find the right project to help with.
There are apps out there that show you the door, like https://goodfirstissue.dev/
- You're shown where to start.
- But what happens afterwards? What if those projects are stale and not maintained anymore? Where are your PRs going?
Of course, you can use Github, and search for OSS projects to contribute to.
- They have most of the information and their search is quite nice.
- But you only get results, it's up to you to make sense of them and find the right project on your own.
And what if you're a startup with an OSS project looking for contributors?
What can you do then?
How can you tell who's interested in contributing to OSS projects like yours?
Wouldn't t be nice if there was a single place where developers could find the best projects for them to contribute to AND have companies find the right developers for their projects?
That's what I want to build for the OSS community
Looking for Pull Requests is like Tinder, but for Open-Source!
- Are you a Developer? Find the best OSS projects and get updates from them.
- Are you a startup? Find the ideal developer eager to contribute to your project.
I've created a landing page for it, and I would love it if some of you could take a look and tell me what you think: https://lookingforpullrequests.carrd.co/
This sounds fun, but I think the moment startup can afford to hire normally - they'll drop out.
Scenario 1 - startup run by indie developer that starts getting customers. Would the maker allow randoms to touch his code?
Scenario 2 - startup run by CEO and CTO starts growing. Would CTO allow randoms touch the code?
I think you'll get best answers by charging your early users. You'll figure out if they're ready to pay for such thing or not. Can help you get 20 initial customers to vlaidate it, let's connect on Twitter.
Hey Denis, thanks for the feedback!
I've seen first hand what open-source based companies want from their community, and I can assure you, they want people contributing to their product. This is a measure of how well received and loved their product is, so finding contributors is a paramount for their success. It's not about letting "randoms" touch their product, of course they would always keep control over it, but things like bug fixes, plugins, extenions, they can all be developed by the community following the company's standards.