6.1Contributing to Open Source

Open source (OSS) is a development philosophy of publishing source so anyone can use, modify, and redistribute it. People worldwide can review, use, and contribute—boosting transparency, reuse, and learning. ■ Forms of contribution and how to proceed Contribution is not only code: docs, bug reports, translations, reviews, and design all count. Code contributions generally follow fork → change on a branch → Pull Request (see the forking flow in the previous chapter). First-time contributors can start with approachable tasks labeled "good first issue". ■ Conventional project files • `README.md` = overview and usage. • `CONTRIBUTING.md` = how to contribute. • `CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md` = expected b…