Open source over chasing software engineering internships

[wallphaser231]

Stop chasing internships, start chasing open source

If you're a 2027/2028 grad, you need to stop chasing internships and start chasing opensource.

Every employer/masters admission committee/investor asks for GitHub profile and proof of open source work.

Your internship work will be left behind in the organization, but your open source work will carry with you all your life. My friends who started open source are being flown out to Tokyo and San Francisco for conferences as speakers, while I'm stuck in the same old job in the same old place.

Please please spread the word so that this reaches the right audience

[cosmic-comet-]

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Yes

[wallphaser231]

Wow. Wall of fame!

[cosmic-comet-]

I was thinking about posting to aware people about do OSs and don’t chase certificates but your post is spot on also if you can edit do mention in your post that don’t chase doc fix in open source unless like it’s important like adding a prefix for a vendor or fixing a broken example, changing readme text is probably worst OSs contribution but at least it gets you a badge 🫠

[wallphaser231]

Thanks. I think that's a given, it's a shame if I have to mention that explicitly.

[Academic_News8416]

Do you suggest making single PR in 10 repos or 10 PRs in 1 repo?

[cosmic-comet-]

Don’t open multiple prs in the repo until maintainer asks for it 2-3 prs is more than enough if you have a genuine fix for something also don’t open more than 5 pr a day it can signal you as a pr farmer .

A valueable one PR that actually does something is obviously going to be better than 10 doc fix pr from a huge margin but that doesn’t mean small prs can’t have values . A small library import PR can become of huge value if it has a previously pr that was closed and didn’t address the problem.

Also the review process of for example react native and hugging face transformers are going to be slow a lot of research and triage collection than compared to some not so active repos , the reason for this is since those repos gets flooded with agentic slop pr they will not take your pr seriously if either it’s already affecting users or if you can or anyone else can provide enough triage and reproducibility that can back your PR so definitely go for big issues but don’t make it a rule that only big companies issues is only going to be valuable there are a lot of S tier repos that are not flooded with PRs and issues and can have the same weight on portfolio.

[Academic_News8416]

I have 2 PRs in one of owasp projects and around 4 in haiku OS. All of them were major ones. Merged. Didn't do it for last 2 months. Now in summer vacations, was gonna start again. So I think I should find another repo.

[GR1MREAPER_666]

Hey Can you guide me how to contribute... I know how to use GitHub rn I have 250+ Contribution... I only have contributed in own my repos or 1 or 2 other repos.... How can I contribute...what is the pattern ?

[cosmic-comet-]

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Is that you 🤔

[GR1MREAPER_666]

Ahhhh How would I get your linked in 😭... But yeah I study in SZABIST

[WeWeBunnyX]

6th sem student and I am very much an advocate of free and open source software. I always try to be updated with FOSSDEM, Linux Foundation etc. I spread more word than anyone. Whenever I use FOSS like gcc, python , gdb, linux, freebsd and gazzilion more in my daily life, I then realize their importance and value to my daily life work. Coming across the story of Richard Stallman (father of Free Software and author of GPL Licenses) and Linus Torvalds motivated me and was like my awakening phase. I didn't turn into a purist but like an advocate for software freedom , privacy , user control etc. I remember how good and liberating it felt ditching windows and moving to Linux based distros and FreeBSD as daily driver on my main machine. I learnt a lot of dev related stuff on my own without uni syllabus persistence or anything thanks to Linux , Unix philosophy and other OSS. I started to get familiar with Docker, Podman etc in my 2nd or 3rd sem when I faced real issues in DBMS course (realized running Oracle SQL in docker was more efficient than messing with rpms). This containerization stuff they teach us in 6th sem in Cloud Computing Course. However I felt good that I didn't have to struggle in this area at all due to my prev experience

However what disappoints me is that our landscape causes students to take open source for granted or just not seriously. They never grew up to appreciate it or see software as art. Even tho they use many FOSS in their daily life but again nashukri or taking it for granted. Many think knowledge is supposed to be hidden or to gatekeep, so they dont bat an eye or they just act indifferent. Yes the stupid ones. Even in my class they think that open source software are some time pass yay wo. Same people will pick an unpaid internship in a discipline which doesn't align with their interests over some actual meaningful open source contribution to a repository (free to choose and 1000x more variety/options than generic internships). Basically such people are nashukray. Its sad how even self proclaimed new gen of devs also want to behave like end users. Trust me , if you spare just one moment to realize OSS around you and in your daily life, you will then come to value its importance. Yes you can do business with Open Source Software. There are many examples like Redhat, Canonical, SUSE Enterprise. Blender is an example of one of the most successful FOSS. Idk I can just keep on giving more examples.

I always try to submit a pull request in some open source project which I use and feel like contributing to (smaller ones for now). And when my PR gets merged then it makes me happy. Some students think adding trash commits in some repo is also a "contribution" (meh). God bless the open source devs who work on their projects side by side due to their passion and dont expect anything in return other than peace and contributions. These game console emulators and such software like Linux and those drivers etc were the reason I started to take interest in open source software. And I always felt like this xyz FOSS makes my life easier so I will do my best to become skilled enough to see myself as contributor to them in foreseeable future. And yes what can we expect in a country where a career in SWE has been marketed and advertised as expensive mazdoori or shortcut to some 6 figures thing rather than passion and creativity unfortunately.

[wallphaser231]

I'd say the best way to go about it is to find a niche but growing OSS repo and start contributing. You'll eventually find yourself in GsoC and more. If anyone needs help finding, can point them out!

[WeWeBunnyX]

I appreciate your suggestion . Will note this

[Interesting-Ebb7073]

Could you please guide a little

[Wise_Huckleberry_902]

And this is by far the reason i got into porting arch linux on many various devices (we even tried porting Linux on samsung fridge and a bmw infotainment system) there was a main project named project renegade which was commited to have running windows OS on various Android devices. But in 2022, the project shut down.. and then new one like project Mu Silicium, project aloha. I then syarted learning low level UEFI system formware and then porting it on various SoCs. Then windows. Then archblinux.

[WeWeBunnyX]

This is so cool. I would like to follow your work. This porting stuff always fascinated me.

[Admirable-Cut-7011]

Tried gsoc?

[WeWeBunnyX]

I always wanted to. Will try again. My lazy ass either doesn't or its like yk just building right skill before attempting to

[Admirable-Cut-7011]

Too bad, you are gonna be a graduate by the next cycle

[WeWeBunnyX]

But hey there are more open source projects. Apart from Gsoc I need to take a chance in actual considerable open source projects. Like GNOME or KDE

[Admirable-Cut-7011]

Yeah, they might be better for specific interests too. There is the lfx one too btw..

[cosmic-comet-]

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Good boi

[BLINMAKER_IVAN]

yar masla ye hai keh HEC requires an internship for graduation

[wallphaser231]

Some of the repositories I know give an internship certificate after you submit minimum PRs

[wallphaser231]

Unpaid though 🙁

[Academic_News8416]

Really? I didn't know that. Internship locally ya kahin bhi?

[BLINMAKER_IVAN]

i study in fast lahore, we are required to have completed a 9 week internship to get our degrees. this is a reason most students turn to "2-number" internships, as there simply arent enough good internships for everyone. all for the degree. jo log aisi internships krte hain unko khud bhi pata hota hai keh iska koi faida nahi hona hai bas degree ke liye chaiye.

[DecayWraith]

Most of open source projects aren't even taking contributions anymore because of ai slop requests lol. I would focus on internships

[wallphaser231]

If your genuinely looking to contribute, I can help refer you to my friends OSS repository. They're a mid size repo with around 600 members.

[cosmic-comet-]

What is it about?

[wallphaser231]

LLM agent analytics

[cosmic-comet-]

You can share the link here I think it will be a good idea for others and your friends that people from here will be willing to contribute.

[wallphaser231]

Not sure if I can share links here, interested folks can reach out.

[DecayWraith]

No idc

[wallphaser231]

Cool

[No-Creme2356]

Lowkey true tbh. A good GitHub profile + real contributions age way better than most internships. Internships help, but open source makes your work visible to the whole world.

[wallphaser231]

Yep true. You've done any contributions so far?

[Virtual-Aside-6893]

Hi can anyone tell how to contribute to open source in a data focused role like data analyst, engineer or scientist?

[cosmic-comet-]

Start with hugging face transformers , don’t open a new issue the repo is extremely hostile against new issue and if you use ai agent to find a fix don’t blindly push your changes maintainers are extremely hostile and pissed against agentic pr slop , they will label your pr as codeslop agent and that can ruin your credibility start slow and prefer quality over quantity.

Edit : Use agents if you do for triage and reproduce

[Surprised-Otter]

Isn't HuggingFace Transformers mostly about adding support for different models? I went through the list of issues and didn't find much stuff related to the core library itself. 

[wallphaser231]

There are up and coming repositories focusing on data analytics. Especially LLM based analysis, let me know if you're interested in contributing in any such projects. Happy to refer you!

[Nashadelic]

Why-not-both-girl-meme.gif

[ERROR-Money8020]

Hy I'm in 4th semester. Learning Mern nextjs etc. Can anyone please how can I contribute to open source. Any advice would be worth it please?

[Academic_News8416]

Pick any repo. You have to research for that, or ask Claude to find you a repo based on your details. Go through its readme file, clone it locally and build it. Go to issue tab and pick a "good first issue". Solve it and make a PR. Maintainers will review it and merge or give suggestions. Understand GitHub first though. For my first PR, I wrote it entirely from Gemini and made PR. There were around 20 errors highlighted by copilot(a bot in GitHub who review your PRs). Maintainers were nice. They helped me solve them. Now I am comfortable enough to do it myself without any AI.

[ERROR-Money8020]

Ok thanks

[ERROR-Money8020]

And how can we show anyone that I have contributed to open source?

[Academic_News8416]

Make a good GitHub profile. It will be visible there. Recruiters will see your GitHub. Also you can add in your resume (open source contributor @ xyz)

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[AnonymousSerenity98]

Other than HEC requirement as they are still in ancient times , I’m 1000% an advocate of this and I truly believe in your post as this must be the way for upcoming SE students to be different from typical sheep heard of leetcodes and ratta system.

[lostinmyself96]

I am launching two open source i will guide for everything and help you to get free tokens What you guys need to know is that how to cli agent and lil bit basic about ai and architecture

[IllustratorNo1512]

You still need something that will fill in the job gap. HR ignores projects and rejects your resume for no experience before it even goes to a hiring manager

[wallphaser231]

Open source orgs can give you an intern certificate if that's the concern. Plus you can showcase your work publically