Before taking the first step of any journey, you must prepare. You must take StepZero.
We at StepZero want to give you the tools you need to take that first step in Open Source.
StepZero is a site dedicated to assisting people learn vital but often overlooked skills and knowledge necessary for contributing to Open Source projects. The articles on StepZero assume very little technical knowledge or experience. They are here as a resource for those who are just starting out and are confounded by the terminology or unexpressed assumptions and expectations of an open source project.
Right now this site is just a GitHub repo. In the future it'll be a nicely-formatted and easy to use GitHub Pages site. Ya gotta start somewhere, eh?
So for now, the best way to use this site may be just to browse the [Table of Contents][./toc.md] to find topics of use to you, then read & follow the links.
Eventually we'll figure out a better way to handle this, perhaps will collections of pages grouped by project/language/topic/etc. Have suggestions how we could do this in a way which is useful to you? Let us know!
Some friends were sitting around chatting at Open Source Bridge 2013. They'd all been doing the open source thing for a while, but were concerned that they kept hearing the same things from would-be contributors: "It's just too hard to contribute." "I don't know where to start." "I ask questions but I don't understand the answers." "People keep assuming I know stuff, but I'm new."
It was obvious that there's an unacknowledged gap between getting started in Open Source and gaining the knowledge necessary to take even that (assumed simple) first step. That knowledge is StepZero.
Some examples of StepZero knowledge which is assumed:
- What's a patch? Pull request?
- Why does it matter if I use tabs or spaces to indent my code?
- I'm on Windows, but I was told Notepad isn't good for code. Why?
- What's a library?
These are questions which are simple and obvious to those of use who have been doing this for a while, but are intimidating and sometimes insurmountable for those new to the field. Questions like form an elitist barrier between the haves and the have-nots of technology.
If we want to expand the reach and contributor base of Open Source, we need to educate people on all of these "simple" and "obvious" subjects. We need to pull back the curtain, reveal our assumptions, and share this fundamental knowledge in a free and open manner.
So those friends decided to do something about it. That was the start of StepZero.
We love helpers! Unfortunately, until we get a little more writing done, this section is going to assume a bit of knowledge. Apologies! Writing those pages is our top priority.
So, how to help?
- Check our GitHub issues.
- Pick an issue, any issue.
- Get writing.
- Send a pull request.
Alternatively:
- Just open a GitHub issue for anything you'd like us to write or any changes you'd like to see.
All pages are written in GitHub-flavored Markdown. We'll have a style guide posted at some point soon (sooner, if we start getting more contributors).
Have questions? Have feedback? Just want to chat? Here's how to find us:
Email to [email protected](currently needs fixing)Join our mailing list(nope, that's not working yet, either)- IRC on the #stepzero channel on Freenode (This works!)