My Experience In Open Source Contribution

A small backstory : When I bought my first digital drawing tablet (I used to draw on my phone with fingers prior to that sobs) I had no idea which software to choose. The most popular choice was Photoshop. But it comes with a subscription model which instantly made me dislike the software already. So I looked for cheaper alternatives and found a lot of free ones like Medibang Paint Pro. It is an awesome program which I still use today but I wanted something more powerful and that's when I found out about Krita, a free and opensource art (and 2D animation) program which is mostly known for being a good Photoshop Alternative. I absolutely loved it and couldn't believe it was free.

It was also the first time I ever heard the term "opensource" and I searched and learnt more about it. Later I realised I have ignorantly been using bunch of opensource softwares.

It was then I wanted to give back to the people who work on these projects, I wanted to contribute (though I didn't even know what that meant back then).

GirlScript Summer Of Code 2021

So I got to know about GirlScript School of Code Event in my college and I just vaguely noticed that it was something about opensource and I applied for it though I didn't really expect to get selected (since my Github and LinkedIn had nothing in them, all I answered were some basic questions like Why do you want to contribute ). But as it turns out I did get selected somehow and that was how I started by journey in opensource.

Initial Period of Chaos

At this point the only knowledge I had was basic HTML, CSS and maybe 15% Javascript. I saw a bunch of words like issues, pullrequests, conflicts etc and I had no idea what any of that meant. My brother helped me with the basics of Git but I still didn't understand well. Luckily all the projects had a proper contribution section in their README and following those helped me making my initial PRs.

So this is how the event works : you make PRs and if they get merged they get assigned tags based on the difficulty levels. They calculate score based on it and the top performers get some prizes.

Initially I joined the event because I just wanted to try contributing but because of the scoring system I kind of got drifted away and I felt like I was making PRs just for points. It didn't feel like quality contribution. So I decided to stop worrying about the score and just wanted to make good PRs.

I also met some cool developers through this event which I will talk about in the next section.

Project Sakura

Project Sakura was one of the projects in the event. It is a custom ROM based on Lineage OS with added customizabilty. I was very intrigued by this one because I was watching a bunch of videos about Secure Mobile OS a few weeks prior to the event. Also this project only used HTML and CSS so it was something I could contribute to.

I made basic PRs like making a README, fixing some redundant CSS, responsive behavior etc, very basic stuff. I also got stuck and made some mistakes at times since I didn't know git well but the maintainers helped whenever I needed.

I really liked their website theme, it was dark and had vibrant colors for accent and a lot of device maintainers seemed to have anime and manga avatars and it gave me an idea for making a new OC, Sakura. Here is the initial design I made of her.

I wanted her to be lively and cheerful who's sole passion lies in threatening requesting people to download Project Sakura :3

Since I took inspiration from their website I decided to send it to the maintainers who seemed to like it too. They also offered me to be a designer for their blog post though I had no experience in design at all.

I stopped contributing much after they decided to use React for their pages completely (I didn't know React). But since I have a better understanding of React and git hopefully I can contribute more.

My Future Plans

Honestly I have no idea what I want to do next. I still haven't given up on my dream of contributing to Krita. Someday I will donate to the developers, I'm grateful to them for making an incredible software for broke artists like me. Also thanks to Project Sakura for all the opportunites they gave. Double also, thanks for everyone working on every other opensource projects.

That's all for this post. Byee :3