My experience in GitHub

I have already been a contributor to a project (you can read a blog about my journey here) and now it's time to be an owner of open source project!

This week I have started an obtaining file info library written in Golang.

How to create an open source project?

Step #1: decide on your idea

I got my idea from professor, because I did it for my open source class.

Step #2: pick up the programming language
I wanted to do something nice and not stressful and pleasant. I  am quite a fan of Golang, so my choice was obvious. Golang is fast, easy and has a nice set of packages.

Step #3: pick up the license
I decided to go an easy way and use good old MIT license.

Step #4: start coding
Coding was easy and smooth, I got a lot of help from various Golang packages, so it was nice.

Step #5: file some issues
If you want people to contribute, you should file some issues, include some nice explanation, screenshots and some starting-point information(if applicable). You should also create a detailed instructions in README. Nice documentation would for sure attract developers.

My experience with contributors

I have done all the steps from a previous section and just waited. 4 hours later I got pull requests for all my issues from one person. He/She was supposed to be my classmate(that's one of the tasks to contribute to one another's projects), but I did not recognize the name... After going through the list of my group, I did not find his name. According to GitHub profile, the guy is from Germany! It is crazy! I did not expect somebody not from my group to contribute!

Anyway, Danke Marcel Beck!