Hi,
I’m looking to contribute to an open source Linux project which matters. I have a mild preference for strongly typed projects; a strong preference for GPL3; and a strong preference for being able to make an impact (i.e., contribute features).
Of course, this might be a question of interest to other users here as well, with their preferences.
In general, I’d recommend contributing to a project you actually use yourself. That way you can eat your own dogfood while contributing. At least that’s how I got into most projects I’m a contributor to.
FWIW, I’d be happy about contributions to qutebrowser which is Python/PyQt and GPLv3. There were 280 pull requests by ~75 people already, and I’m always happy helping people getting started or mentoring them.
the projects I heavily use tend to be super heavyweight to get into: firefox, SBCL, enlightenment, emacs. Big codebases with lots of complexity, so I am pretty unwilling to “eat” that level of code in the evenings. But you’re right in general, I’ve thrown many fixes into the mix for libraries I use! :-)
One place that’s relatively easy to start is plugins/integrations. My first open-source project was a last.fm plugin for (the now-defunct) noatun. You might not be able to contribute to firefox proper yet but you could almost certainly write an extension or contribute to your favourite one; likewise for emacs.
I have a recommendation elementary OS (i am biased though, see my hat).
All our code is GPLv3 (that i know of, some might be GPLv2) and can be found at launchpad.net.
Most of our development is done in Vala which is similar to Java/C#. We are a small group of developers and generally hangout in our Slack which is not publicly accessible (though #elementary and #elementary-dev on freenode is bridged to Slack) when you land your first merge request, you get invited to the Slack.
Lots of opportunities to make impact.
We even pay developers to contribute features that are a high priority through Bounty Source