{"slug": "github-for-beginners-getting-started-with-oss-contributions", "title": "GitHub for Beginners: Getting started with OSS contributions", "summary": "GitHub published a beginner's guide to contributing to open source software (OSS), explaining how to find projects with \"good first issue\" labels using GitHub Copilot Chat. The guide covers identifying well-maintained repositories by checking for README files, contributor guides, open source licenses, and active development. This tutorial aims to help new developers make their first contributions to large-scale projects hosted on GitHub.", "body_md": "Welcome back to GitHub for Beginners. So far, we’ve discussed GitHub Issues and Projects, GitHub Actions, security, GitHub Pages, and Markdown. This time we’re going to talk about open source software and how to contribute to that community. By the end of this post, you’ll know what open source is, how to find projects to work on, how to read an open source repository, as well as start making your first contributions. So let’s get started!\nOpen source software (OSS) refers to software that features freely available source code. In contrast with “closed source software,” OSS is publicly available for anyone to use and build upon. This means that all of the work, including the codebase and communication between users, is available for everyone to see.\nIf you’re just getting started in the world of software development, browsing and contributing to open source projects is a great way to dip your toes into large, impactful projects used by countless users worldwide.\nGitHub is the home for open source software, so let’s look at how to find projects you can contribute to.\nHow to find OSS projects to work on\nContributing to an open source software project for the first time can be daunting—we’ve all been there! The first step is to look for projects in a language that you know which are accepting new contributors. One of the ways you can do this is to ask GitHub Copilot Chat for help.\nNavigate to github.com and select the Copilot icon to open a chat window.\nIn the bottom-left corner of the chat window, use the combo box to select Ask.\nEnter a prompt like the following, but remember to update it for a language you’re comfortable with.\nI’m looking for a list of open source projects written in TypeScript that are accepting new contributors. Search GitHub and narrow down the list to repositories that use the good first issue label and have over 100 stars on GitHub.\nCopilot will do some searching and return a list of projects you can explore filtered by the good first issue label. This label indicates that an issue is beginner friendly, and a great starting point for new contributors. This label is a great way to find issues in a project you can work on.\nFor example, let’s say that you wanted to contribute to the vscode repository.\nAt the top of the repository, select the Issues tab.\nOn the Issues page, click the Labels box to open the drop down menu.\nIn the text box on the drop down menu, start typing “good” until you see the option for good first issue.\nSelect the good first issue label.\nThe window will update and display a list of good first issues for you to work on. But before jumping in, you should read the contributor’s guide in the project’s repository. Most well-maintained open source projects will have one.\nUnderstanding an open source project\nAs we just alluded to, most open source projects have a few things in common if they’re well maintained. These are the following items:\nA well-documented README with installation instructions.\nA contributor’s guide that explains how to contribute.\nAn open source license, so everyone knows the project is free to use.\nAt least 100 GitHub stars to show it’s used in the community.\nActive development so that you know a maintainer of the source code will be able to review your contributions.\nA good first issue label to indicate its open to new contributors.\nWhen you’re looking for a project to contribute to, these are the things you should be looking for in a repository.\n💡 For more documentation on finding a good open source project, go to gh.io/gfb-oss to learn more about finding good first issues.\nMaking an OSS contribution\nNow let’s look at an actual project and work on how you would submit your first issue. For this demo, take a look at the gitfolio repository. Using the bullet points above, we want to see if this would be a good project to work on.\nThe project does have a well-documented README file.\nThe project has a contributor’s guide: CONTRIBUTING.md.\nYou can see the open source license: LICENSE.\nIt has several thousands of stars, so well over our 100 benchmark.\nAt the top of the file list, you can see the most recent check in which should be fairly recent. While writing this, the last check in was yesterday, indicating the project is being actively maintained.\nBased on these points, as long as you are familiar with TypeScript, this is a good repository to contribute to. However, you don’t need to be familiar with TypeScript to continue following along in the demo.\nNow you want to create a fork of the repository. A fork is a copy of the repository that we can freely experiment on and make changes in without affecting the original project. We usually use forks for open source contributions. If you need a refresher on forking a repository, check out this previous GitHub for Beginners blog.\nNavigate to the home page of the project if you are not already there.\nAt the top of the project, click the Fork button.\nIn the new window, leave yourself as the owner and make sure the “Repository name” is the same as the original repository (i.e., “gitfolio”).\nAt the bottom of the window, select Create fork.\nIn your forked copy of the repository, click README.md in the list of files.\nChange the file by adding some text.\nIn the top-right, select Commit changes…\nMake sure to select the option at the bottom for Create a new branch from this commit and start a pull request.\nSelect Propose changes.\nOn the following window, click the Create pull request button. This will let you create a pull request to the main repository from your branch with the changes.\nAt the top of the “Open a pull request” window, select compare across forks. This will show your fork’s changes compared to the original repository.\nIf you were submitting an actual change to the repository—not just walking through a demo—this is where you would give your pull request a title and a description. You’d also want to provide a link to the issue that you were solving in the description of the pull request.\nAt this point, you’d be ready to submit your pull request by clicking the button at the bottom of the window. However, once you do that, it no longer becomes just a change in your fork and will be a requested update on the original repository. That’s why it isn’t included in the steps above. When you do submit your pull request, it will be available and ready for a maintainer to review and, hopefully, approve!\nOnce approved and merged, GitHub automatically applies the changes from your fork into the main branch of the original repository, the official source of truth for the codebase.\nWhat’s next?\nCongratulations! You’ve learned how to make your own contributions to open source software. I hope it inspires you to contribute to your favorite projects.\nAnd if you’re looking for more information, we have lots of documentation that can help. Here are a few links to get you stated:\nKedasha is a Developer Advocate at GitHub where she enjoys sharing the lessons she's learned with the wider developer community. She finds joy in helping others learn about the tech industry and loves sharing her experience as a software developer. Find her online @itsthatladydev.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/github-for-beginners-getting-started-with-oss-contributions", "canonical_source": "https://github.blog/developer-skills/github/github-for-beginners-getting-started-with-oss-contributions/", "published_at": "2026-05-11 16:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-05-18 05:19:56.159605+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": [], "entities": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/github-for-beginners-getting-started-with-oss-contributions", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/github-for-beginners-getting-started-with-oss-contributions.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/github-for-beginners-getting-started-with-oss-contributions.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/github-for-beginners-getting-started-with-oss-contributions.jsonld"}}