The essence of open source cannot be denied in present world. Almost all the popular applications have made use of open source at some point. Open source community has played an immense role in leveraging the career achievements of many people who joined the community just to embellish their skills. So what are these factors that can actually help innovators like you to excel in your respective fields by making use of open source,
- The first and the most important step is recognizing your niche. You have to introspect and decide what is that one thing that you can passionately do even when you are not being paid for it at the initial stages.
- Once you get this answer, you have to start looking for projects of same nature plus the ones that provide you with an opportunity to actually learn and improve. You have to make sure that you only choose projects that add some value to your skill set too and not just to your resume.
- The secret of getting ahead is getting started. So take that first step. Tell the community what your potential is and how you want to use it to be a part of their network. Communicate about your areas of interest and how you wish to contribute in a specific project that shares similar interest.
- In the beginning your contribution might not be a chartbuster. But don’t lose hope because at this point your focus should be on more and more involvement even if that means that you are helping the user with some simple functionality. This is the stage when you have enough time to research, have a word with different people and analyze the basic structure.
- Connect with people who have same ideas on mind or working in the same field. Take full advantage of working with diverse people with diverse experiences. Discuss your idea with them, ask them what they think about it, take note of their suggestions and if there’s anything they can do to help you. That’s how you can enlarge your circle.
- When you know better, you do better. If you encounter a problem, don’t just rush to find a solution but first of all make sure that there is actually a problem and not an irresponsible mistake.
- Sustainability and Reusability are the important factors that can make you stand out in the crowd. Develop future proof codes that can serve multiple purposes with a little modification.
- Presentation and Documentation matters a lot. You have to present yours ideas or work in a such a comprehensive manner that even a person who knows nothing about your field can easily understand it. It is equally important to maintain a proper record of all your projects to track your progress and check if you are moving forward in the right direction.
- In fact, documentation offers a good scope of career in open source projects to non coders who are interested in technical writing. Open source community also offers people with amiable marketing strategies, management skills and blog writers with great opportunities.
- Entering the open source community is easy but making a comfortable space for yourself can be a tough job. Many people feel left out and unwelcomed while working on open source projects. But now steps are being taken by different communities to make their system inclusive and diverse. Besides technical knowledge people with decent code of conduct are preferred. Due to growing awareness the open source community is doing its best to safeguard people from any kind of discrimination or harassment.
- Open source is a platform that provides you with an unmatched exposure and innumerous opportunities to level up your skills. All you have to do is look for people who are already working in areas of your interest, analyze their work approach and try to participate more and more so that they can notice your work and guide you. There are programs being conducted where newcomers are paired with eminent leaders so that the latter can mentor the former and help the newbies in building their skills and confidence.
- Success doesn’t come easy, so make sure that you stick to the three ‘Ps’ Patience, Persistence and Perseverance. Good communication plays a key role in open source. Your prudence and courteousness will help your circle to grow.
Importance of Open Source Technology
Open source is a source code that is publicly accessible for modification and redistribution. Almost all the websites, applications and cloud solutions are based on open source technologies. The strong values of community, collaboration and transparency are prime factors that make open source the forefront leader of advancing technology.
Community Support
The greatest advantage of open source is the free sharing of ideas. Developers enjoy the freedom of creating their own projects and also get paid support from other organizations by helping them in developing solutions for their enterprises. This helps not only in extensive sharing of ideas but also the quicker delivery of end products.
Flexibility and Agility
Open Source provides for technology flexibility, agility and freedom from vendors’ lock-in risks. No matter how complex the problem is, there are innumerous ways to solve it or you have the freedom to create your own solutions without being dependent on anybody else. The compatible formats, easy portability and the ease of customization are not available in proprietary software.
Cost effective
As majority of projects are budget challenged open source helps in minimizing expenses by providing inexpensive solutions. Users don’t have to worry about expensive license fees, maintenance fees and upgrade expenses. In addition to this open source solutions take lesser hardware power as they are easily portable and compressible. Small enterprises can easily scale up using open source technologies.
Reliability and Security
As the code is freely accessible to everyone it is more secured and transparent than the proprietary codes. With thousands of contributors working and prying on the code, the code is under constant scrutiny and if any problem arises it is immediately fixed.
Integrated Management
Open source makes use of high end technologies like Common Information Model (CIM) and Web based enterprise management (WBEM) to ensure efficient administration. These technologies enable the unified management of distributed computing environments.
Simple License Management
A great advantage of open source is that developers can get started quickly from any location without facing any proprietary licensing hurdles. Open source provides freedom from any kind of tracking, counting license compliance and anti piracy models.
High Quality
The source code is well designed and of top notch quality as it is constantly vetted, upgraded frequently and cutting edge features are regularly added to the library. Today open source has become an integral part of every organization.
Technically advanced
Open source is the future. The products developed using open source are not just up to date but are also sustainable and reusable. The cutting edge pool of tools allows users to scale up by adopting latest technologies and there is full freedom to switch to other software or platforms.