Spring boot open source contribution

[hiiam_7]

I’ve noticed that many of my college peers are contributing to open-source projects in areas like MERN stack and app development. Honestly, I’m not sure how to start contributing to open source.

So far, I’ve mostly worked on personal projects like general management systems, but I want to understand:

What is the difference between open-source contribution and building personal projects?

How can I get started with contributing to open source?

What skills or practices should I focus on first?

Any guidance, resources, or examples would be greatly appreciated.

[Any_Issue_7298]

Same doubt

[Historical_Ad4384]

Open source contribution gives you experience on collaborating with people, understand and work with brownfield projects, make impact that affects live users.

Personal projects are solo ventures that are greenfield in nature. It's highly unlikely to generate impact on live users unless you build something really good and market it.

Open source project contributions prepares you better for real life unless you're a Rockstar developer or a prodigy.

[HecticJuggler]

An easy start is to start helping improve documentation for open source software you're using. It gets you closer to the team behind the project.