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The Pragmatic Open Source Contributor

- The Pragmatic Contributor - The Pragmatic Patch Playbook - Conclusion I sometimes have the feeling that salaried programmers shy away from fixing or extending open source code due to some combination of the following: - They don’t think it’s part of their job. - Their employer doesn’t think it’s part of their job, and/or does not have the necessary legal infrastructure and will.

I still think a “warm handoff” is important here, to actually reach out in person to the maintainers to let them know that you’re open to discussion and are serious about embarking on the process of making a significant contribution. You’re making a trade-off between speed of delivery (leveraging your patch immediately) and maintenance burden (carrying your fork through upgrades); in my workplaces the former usually trumps the latter, depending on how often you expect to pull in upstream changes. Familiarity and confidence in this process empowers you to blast through technical barriers, as you might no longer be “blocked” from achieving your goals due to some underlying third-party code not supporting XYZ.

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