It's like Tinder, but for OSS projects
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/
Tinder is the best! I met my soul mate on it.
What do you think about a 'pay per feature' type of OSS model led by the community?
Can you elaborate more on this? Would that be for LFPR? Like if you want to import and publish your repos, that's X dollars, and if you want to also be highlighted on the newsletter, that's Y dollars, and so on?
I'm thinking this is a mechanism for new features to be paid directly by the community of users of the OSS.
Lots of room from details and improvements but that's the basic idea.
I'm a developer, I a maintainer of an OSS project that accepts contributions, I have contributed to other OSS projects.
The usual scenario when I end up submitting a PR is:
I don't think I've ever contributed code as a result of having some time to kill, and looking for fun projects to contribute.
Hey, thanks for the feedback, I definitely agree with you there. There is a full group of developers who only contribute reactively, let's call it. They have a need, like you say, and then they act on it. This is great and I see what you mean, those devs would not be interested in a product like this one.
However, the OSS movement is huge and there are many devs who have never really done any type of contributions simply because they don't know how to.
Some devs want to find OSS projects to contribute to get some experience in fields they don't otherwise have contact with, others like to help out and find cool projects, heck, others use it as a klout ("I've contributed to XXXX open source projects in the last year").
But right now, getting into OSS without a particular need is not that straightforward. That's the section of devs I'm trying to reach here.