3 Helpful Websites to Find Open Source Projects for Beginner GitHub Contributors
Find and contribute to open source projects
There are tons and tons of open source projects on GitHub that need help from contributors. Sometimes, the GitHub search bar is not the best in trying to find issues and projects — I cannot tell you how many times I have stumbled upon a random university student’s class project!
So, contributors. Here’s the issue — it’s issues. Issues are important for tracking development and progress in a project. There’s a wide range of issues from fixing mere spelling mistakes to figuring out how to build a space-time continuum in your backyard (okay, maybe not that crazy) but you get what I mean.
There’s so many projects and issues out there, but trying to find the right one for you is another story. So I went on the hunt to find other resources that made finding projects and good first issues on GitHub easier.
Goodfirstissue.dev
This was the first site I visited when trying to find my first open source project to contribute to. What makes goodfirstissue.dev easy to use is how you can just click a language and a list of projects with issue headlines would update on the site.
Pros
- quick one-way finding of several projects with the selected programming language
- provides a list of open issues within the project
Cons
- limited to filtering only by a given programming language
- some issues are outdated
- probably not intended for non-programmers
Up-for-grabs.net
Similar to the other website, up-for-grabs.net has a filter for last updated but with more filters to pinpoint the project you want to contribute to.
Pros
- more filters means more specific projects you are comfortable with contributing to
- includes popular tags
Cons
- issue headlines are not shown in project previews
Goodfirstissues.com
Last but not least, my favorite website to find open source projects for beginners is the one and only goodfirstissues.com. This site helped me pick my first open source project that I was able to contribute to!
Pros
- filters are awesome
- more variety and range of projects to choose from
- easy to read and minimal
- includes metadata of projects such as number of stars and assignees
Cons
- there might be a lot of scrolling since there can be multiple issues from the same project
Whether you are just learning how to use GitHub or not, anyone can contribute to open source projects. These three websites are a great starting point on your journey in becoming a great open source contributor.
I hope this article was helpful.
Now go and find some awesome projects!
