This week in class, we learned the measures to take when choosing an Open Source project to get involved with. We also had a wonderful guest speaker from Bloomberg terminal come to us about.

Project Evaluations

On Monday’s class we went through the motions of looking at an actual Open Source project and evaluating it. The class was split up into groups of 4 or 5, and each group was given an Open Source project to examine. It was up to the group to follow the steps that were discussed to determine if the project was a good fit for us to hypothetically to work on.

My group and I had to evaluate OpenEMR, which we learned is a software that manages medical practices, and Medical records. We first looked at the website for [OpenEMR] (https://www.open-emr.org/) . The website was very easy to navigate. It contained information about the project is about, how to download the software, forums to communicate with the project’s contributors, and a link to the GitHub repository. These were all good signs of a well-maintained OSS project. THe GitHub repository was also very straight forward and informative. The REAMME contains all the information a programmer needs to know. The repository contained licenses, code of conduct file, and instructions on how to contribute. One thing I really thought was helpful for people new to Open Source project is that there are separate instructions for experienced contributors and people who are new to contributing to projects like these. As a person with minimal experience in contributing to open source projects, I thought having that extra set of instructions is very useful and encouraging to those looking to learn about contributing. This shows that the project creators want and encourage new programmers to start adding new ideas to their project.

This activity thought me the key things to look for in an Open Source Project. These things include documentation, accessibility, and the welcoming of the community. Documentation is extremely important. What kind of license, the style, how to contribute, and much more are needed for a programmer to effectively be a part of the project. Accessibility is also important. By accessibility, I mean the skill sets needed for the project. OpenEMR is mostly written in PHP, a coding language I do not know. This is a major indicator that this project is not right for me. Another important thing to look for is the activity of the community. OpenEMR had active contributors that were commenting and issuing pull requests that same day we looked at it. This shows that people are actively working on the project.

Overall, this project showed me how to look for a project that would be a great fit for me. I did not face any challenges during the project evaluations, as OpenEMR showed me what a good Open Source project looks like. After this activity, I now feel like I am ready to select a project to work on.

Bloomberg

On Wednesday’s class we had a guest speaker, Kevin Flemming, from Bloomberg come to us about how he and his company use and contribute to Open Source projects. Growing up in NYC, I knew the company Bloomberg of being the new company the mayor owned. Fleming, who is the operations manager at Bloomberg, explained to us that Bloomberg is not a typical news company. It provides financial software tools, financial news, and other services to financial companies. One service that Fleming explained in detail was the Bloomberg Terminal, which is a system that allows financial companies to access news feeds, and real-tome financial date.

Fleming explained the importance of Open source to companies like Bloomberg. Open Source is used almost everywhere, whether the company is open about it or not. I wasn’t aware that companies, like Bloomberg, are active participants in Open Source projects. Bloomberg contribute to very popular projects, such as Jupiter and Typescript. I have heard of Jupyter before but was not aware that is open source. Fleming spoke about a specific contribution Bloomberg engineers made to Jupyter where they updated the layout of Jupyter and added an edit button. I thought it was interesting that such a simple contribution was very helpful to the users.

Fleming’s presentation was very informative, and I learned a lot about how the financial sector and other companies both utilize and contribute to Open Source projects. Before, I did not know that large companies, like Bloomberg, would use open source project let alone contribute to it. I learned that large companies support and contribute to open source projects to create ties between the community and the business.

My Contributions

So far, I have contributed to two different projects. I made several contributions to OpenStreetMap. I added popular parks, restaurants and schools in my neighborhood in Queens. Open Street map was the first contribution I made. Initially, I was nervous making contributions. However, OpenStreetMap makes it easy. I also contributed to Wikipedia. I added information about a film, Little Women (2019), to its Wikipage. I am also making it a habit to look at classmates’ blogs to see if I can contribute to anything. However, I am still new to GitHub. To practice I published an issue on my GitHub because the dates on my posts were wrong.