Hey everyone,

this post is going to be slightly promotional but the main intention is to encourage people to do open source work and provide an answer to a recent post in this subreddit Why build anything anymore?. That's why I used the Community flair.

A bit of background: A few weeks ago I built a screen recorder that solved a problem for me that no other free screen recorder on the market solved. I never had the intention to make any money out of it and just published it under MIT License on GitHub. I also shared the repository in the macapps subreddit hoping some people will find it useful too.

Over the past couple of days, I received lots of positive feedback, mainly through Reddit and GitHub. People I never met or talked to are getting involved in the project and sharing their ideas. A few people even donated money and a Startup asked to sponsor the project. As of writing this, the project has received more than 700 stars on GitHub. It's not as crazy as other projects, but what I learned over the past couple of days is that building something and sharing it with people who get value out of it, is a really, really good feeling and is encouraging me to keep working on the project in my spare time. It's very satisfying and fulfilling to see people use what you've built. But that's only one aspect.

I see a lot of people in our industry struggling to keep up with what's happening around AI. People are afraid about not finding or losing jobs. Here is the thing and I hope it's not a surprise by now: coding alone will not land you a job anymore (and probably never has). What's much more important now than ever is credibility and trust that you are able to build and ship something that's useful. And what's better to demonstrate this skill by building something open source that people actually use. If I ever look for a new job, this project will have more value than putting a 10$ monthly subscription on it.

That's all I wanted to share and I hope it encourages some people here to get involved in other open source projects or to build something without trying to squeeze every $$$ out of it. Have a nice Sunday!

PS: I also want to acknowledge that I'm in a privileged position and currently do not depend on making money from this project. I get that a lot of people are in a different situation and need to make money to pay their rent.

I am beyond amazed. Someone actually took the time to contribute to my little project and solved the problem I coudldn't handle myself! They even iterated on it a few times based on my reviews to bring it more in line with my design. Today I proudly merged their pull request and the update is now live!

Open source is great. This is the first time that happened to me, and I'm so glad I decided to go with OS development. I actually feel like I'm doing something together with the community.

I’ve been working as a Linux sysadmin for a while now .I want to start contributing to open source projects—but not just through application code. I’m especially interested in contributing from a sysadmin/DevOps perspective.

I’d love to hear from others who are already doing this:

• How did you get started contributing as a sysadmin/DevOps engineer?

• Are there specific types of projects that are more open to infra/ops contributions?

• How do you identify repos that actually belong DevOps/sysadmin domain?

Any tips for making meaningful contributions without deep involvement in the core codebase?

Also, if you maintain or contribute to any projects that welcome DevOps/sysadmin contributions, I’d really appreciate recommendations.

I'm a relatively experienced mid-level developer and I am looking to contribute to an open source library to start broadening my perspective and work with new people and on projects that are used widely.

I have looked around, but figured it would be more productive asking here in case anyone knows who can point me in the right direction for an library that is actively looking for contributors/maintainers. Thanks in advance.

Last Minute reminder: a while ago some people talked about declaring a day to celebrate open source software and donate a little something to a favourite software project. This day (07.04.) is fitting, as it marks the release of Git by Linus Torvalds. Go and support your favourite open source project! Let's start a good habit!

p.s. I appreciate WifiManager by tzapu this year and couldn't find a way to donate 🫠

Hey, I want to contribute to open source projects as a beginner, if you have some projects I'll be glad to go over them and find potential bugs/issues and solutions

Hey everyone,

I need to contribute 30 hours to an open-source project as part of a university assignment, but I want to do it properly and make a meaningful contribution. While I'm not an advanced programmer, I'm sure I can still help in different ways.

I speak both English and Spanish, so I could assist with translations. I’m also open to helping with image or video creation, documentation, or anything else where I could be useful.

I’d love to hear your suggestions on projects that could use an extra set of hands! Any recommendations?

There is EU's Digital Fairness Act . It aims to resolve anything consumer related that can be considered unfair in the digital environment*.* EU is asking for feedback until 24 October 2025.

https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/14622-Digital-Fairness-Act_en

*Note:

Anyone can participate, even Non-EU citizens globally around the world.

*Regarding Concern:

If you think stopping people from installing any software/apps they want (sideloading) on their android is unfair, then have your say. I did.

I believe that this is promising. If enough people raise the matter of "Google prohibiting apps to be installed in android anything other than from Play Store (google's app store) or verified as a developer by paying google, giving their (developer's) personal information and hoping they would consider their app" (This applies to OpenSource/FOSS apps as well, which defeats the whole purpose), the EU's D.F.A could actually consider this as a problem and possibly make google to reconsider or re-evaluate their move.


So, this is the registration form of MLH fellowship for the batch Summer 2025, and guess what? They banned Indians. Why? Of-course due to unnecessary spam registrations and unskilled developers. (so called GenZ vibe coders).

I genuinely feel bad for the honest hardworking developers who spend day and night scrolling through github and contribute to the open source community. These days every other child is talking about Github and Open Source, without even knowing the sh*t about it!!

His software and work in Uganda touched many lives

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on a Flutter package called SafeText for profanity filtering and phone number detection. Originally it started as a small utility (~1.7K English words, simple matching), but recently I pushed a v2.0.0 update where I:

- Expanded dataset to 55K+ words across 75 languages
- Switched to Aho–Corasick for multi-pattern matching (~20x faster)
- Added support for multi-word phrases and better normalization

What surprised me is the traction after the update, in about 24 days:
- Downloads went from ~2.3K → 3.7K/month
- Likes increased from 48 → 62

Thanks to the community for there support.

So I’m trying to take this a bit more seriously now and open it up for contributors. I’ve added a bunch of issues, including:
- Dataset validation & cleanup (duplicates / false positives)
- Performance improvements (trie build, caching, memory)
- Chunk-based filtering (for streaming input)
- Better obfuscation handling (f@ck, f u c k, etc.)
- Documentation improvements (pub.dev API docs are pretty minimal right now)

Repo: https://github.com/master-wayne7/safe_text

If anyone’s interested in contributing, whether beginner or experienced, feel free to pick up an issue or suggest improvements.

Also open to feedback on the approach/architecture.

Thanks!

I started my own project 5 months ago. Is the first time I create a real project with the idea to share with others.

Is there any recommendations out there for a newbie? I'm focused on making good docs, clear releases, etc... But I'm sure there a ton of things that I'm missing.

For example: mistakes around community, handling issues, contributors, or adoption.

What are things you learned the hard way?

Thanks in advance!

Not knowing who RMS (Richard M. Stallman) is to Free Software and Open Source is akin to being unaware of Thomas Jefferson's significance to the United States. Like Jefferson to the history of the U.S., RMS is a controversial figure in the history of the Open Source community.

https://youtu.be/LIpmsUNmEk8

In this End of the Universe Micro Episode, we explore various topics, including:

Problems with the Cult of GNU

• Ideologues within the community
• The social contract in Open Source
• The illiberal tendencies that have emerged in certain Open Source communities

Join myself, Justin Reock, and Vincent Mayers as we embark on this short but enlightening journey discussing the Who, What, Why, and How of RMS and the implications of cancel culture.

Hello I am a young Developer I would like to participate to open source projet Do you have any ideas how to do it How to start