1. Technology Stack
Before starting the development of an open-source project, you must understand your technology stack and what language or framework you can use for development. Next, you must realize your own programming level and select an open-source project of the corresponding level to be able to learn and code better. As for the software’s source code, in the early days of programming, you don’t need to do in-depth learning. You just need to understand the requirements and general structure of the project.
2. Number of Stars
Generally speaking, after the homepage keyword search, the priority is sorted based on the number of stars. Most often, a high number of stars does not necessarily mean the best, but to some extent, it depicts the popularity of this project. Earning a star on an open source project is way more complicated than getting a “heart” on Instagram.
3. Project Author
In such cases, where the number of stars is similar, you can also use the influence of the project author. Of course, influential people are not always the best choice, but at least they are not unreliable. At the same time, you can also have a look at the author’s previous works, excellent and reliable authors, most of the open source projects are highly popular and reliable.
In general, organizations’ projects are prioritized to personal projects. This is because, after all, the organization’s development strength is much stronger than that of individual developers. Simultaneously, an organization’s project security features and reliability are bound to be better than individual developers.
4. README.md
README.md is documentation about the project and its characteristics. This document contains the project name with a brief introduction, project background, project LOGO and use screenshots, feature points of the project, experience address, how to download the project, how to download the project, how to work with the project, the required dependencies installation project, How to install, how to deploy, and the Debug method. Overall, the level of detail and aesthetics of README.md is directly proportional to the reliability of the open source project.
5. Last update time of the project
In an open source project, the most fearful thing is that the programmer does not maintain it. It signifies there will be no updates in the future, and it is challenging to solve problems quickly. The update time of the project is frequent, and the update date is near, which signifies that the project developer is still maintaining it.
6. Issues and Fork
When there are many issues, the developers respond quickly, and the number of Forks reflects the degree of attention and popularity of the assignment.
7. Open Source Agreement
The use of open source softwares must also comply with some specific principle, the so-called open-source agreement. Some common open source licenses include:
LGPL, BSD, GPL, Apache Licence Version 2.0, MIT are some of the common open source licenses.
MIT should be regarded as one of the most popular open-source agreements so far, with the widest degree of openness. The only condition it requires is that a project based on this project must also have an MIT agreement attached (the agreement has the name of the original developer), which means that the signature is necessary to be retained.
Taking everything into consideration, if the source code in your open-source project does not signify much and you just want to focus on writing the code, attaching a copy of the MIT agreement is the most worry-free choice you can make.
After going through the comprehensive evaluation index, just select the one that is relatively mature and suitable for you.
How to find the right open source project on GitHub
When the developers become aware of the key elements such as the technology stack, programming language, python algo trading libraries or framework, they can browse through search engines or code hosting platforms. Let’s consider GitHub as an example. In addition to direct search for keywords, GitHub also provides various conditional search features. By properly utilizing these functions, programmers can find the high-quality source projects we want more quickly and efficiently.
Follow the GitHub trend list
On the GitHub “Trending” page, you can easily learn about the most exciting repositories and developers in the GitHub community on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Moreover, you can also follow the GitHub trend list, making it easier to find high-quality projects suitable for your study and use.
Use GitHub Smart Recommendation
If you have spent a lot of time on GitHub, you can visit the Github/explore section. Find some projects recommended by Github based on your interests on the page. Relatively speaking, stack technology is more relevant.
Is there anything you can do with an open source system?
The following questions should arise in a developer’s mind while scanning an Open-Source code:
- Can I make money with it?
- Sticky? Can it be closed?
- Can it be modified using python algo trading?
- Can it be reissued?
- Etc.
However, in almost all cases, even Open source software is protected by some sort of license that describes how and what we can do with the source code.
Community rules
If, however, someone gives his head to get involved in the development of open-source software, it is worth looking at the rules we need to follow. The document can easily answer the following questions:
- Who can submit changes?
- Who verifies the submitted source code?
- Who judges the source code quality?
- Fix bugs? Testing?
There is a possibility that a separate wiki page is dedicated to this, but we may not be able to find this. In such cases, don’t hesitate to email the original developers, as they will most likely be happy to resolve your issues.
Contribution to the project
If you are a budding developer looking to start a PR (i.e. Pull Request) later, you need to know all about the development part of the original repository. In addition, you should look for what rules to follow before developing.
About the Company:
Currently, open weaver the largest collection point for open source programs. If you are looking to get involved in an open-source project, you can use it to browse through tons of already made code, find open source libraries, find packages, and also collaborate and interact with other developers to achieve the best results.