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Ask HN: What open source projects need help?

203 points aaronbrethorst | 3 comments | 16 Nov 24 17:22 UTC | HN request time: 0.418s | source

Let's match open source projects that need help with developers looking to contribute. Think of this as "Who's Hiring" but for open source - a monthly thread to surface interesting projects that could use more hands.

Please include: Project name and description (if not widely known); Tech stack; Areas needing help (DOCS, CODE, DESIGN, etc.); Level (BEGINNER-FRIENDLY if applicable); Email address or other means of contacting you.

Ground rules:

Post only if you maintain/run the project

One post per project/suite

No commercial recruitment

No thread complaints

Developers: Only reach out if you actually want to contribute.

Show context
aaronbrethorst ◴[16 Nov 24 17:27 UTC] No.42157583[source]▶
OneBusAway

A suite of real-time public transit projects that are used by millions of people every day. OneBusAway helps people find out when and where their bus will arrive, and provides them with a trip planner, too. OBA is used by transit riders everywhere from Seattle to New York City; Adelaide, Australia to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In addition to developers, we would also benefit greatly from product management and user experience assistance.

Tech stacks in need of help:

iOS app (Swift): developers, 2+ years of experience with iOS.

Android app (Java/Kotlin): developers, 2+ years of experience with Android.

REST API Server (Java): developers, 2+ years of experience with Java.

Docs: Java developers with an interest in technical writing who can help to document our backend systems.

Find all of our projects: https://github.com/onebusaway

Join our Slack: https://join.slack.com/t/onebusaway/shared_invite/zt-2jve26v...

Reach out to me directly: aaron@onebusaway.org

replies(3): >>42157934 #>>42158915 #>>42159875 #
1. kilimanjaro3 ◴[16 Nov 24 22:18 UTC] No.42159875[source]▶
I need years of experience in your tech stack to contribute to your opensource project? Is this common?
replies(2): >>42162077 #>>42173076 #
2. aaronbrethorst ◴[17 Nov 24 04:58 UTC] No.42162077[source]▶
Feel free to check out the projects and find an issue where you can contribute.

You're just a lot less likely to be successful without good foundational knowledge of the technologies we use, and our volunteers don't have a lot of bandwidth to try to train new prospective volunteers on the fundamentals of, say, Swift UI, Android development, or Ruby on Rails.

3. rty32 ◴[18 Nov 24 15:16 UTC] No.42173076[source]▶
It is absolutely not common.

It is reasonable to expect contributors to have a certain amount of programming experience, but I rarely see any open source projects ask for requirements in a very specific area like a job posting. Many open source projects -- I am not talking about React or VSCode -- would be happy to see people creating pull requests at all, and are willing to provide pointers or hints for people who have experience but may not be so proficient in a specific language. Most of the projects work well that way.