Thanks for checking out the Open Source Guides! We're excited to hear and learn from you. Your experiences will benefit others who read and use these guides.

We've put together the following guidelines to help you figure out where you can best be helpful.

0. Types of contributions we're looking for
1. Ground rules & expectations
2. How to contribute
3. Style guide
4. Setting up your environment
5. Contribution review process
6. Community

First and foremost, this project is a forum to discuss open source best practices, then document them in a guide when we've found consensus. Your first contribution might be starting a new conversation, or adding to an existing conversation, around best practices. You can do so under Issues.

There are also many ways you can directly contribute to the guides (in descending order of need):

• Fix editorial inconsistencies or inaccuracies
• Add stories, examples, or anecdotes that help illustrate a point
• Revise language to be more approachable and friendly
• Translate guides into other languages
• Propose a new guide (here's how)

Interested in making a contribution? Read on!

Before we get started, here are a few things we expect from you (and that you should expect from others):

• Be kind and thoughtful in your conversations around this project. We all come from different backgrounds and projects, which means we likely have different perspectives on "how open source is done." Try to listen to others rather than convince them that your way is correct.
• Open Source Guides are released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By participating in this project, you agree to abide by its terms.
• If you open a pull request, please ensure that your contribution passes all tests. If there are test failures, you will need to address them before we can merge your contribution.
• When adding content, please consider if it is widely valuable. Please don't add references or links to things you or your employer have created as others will do so if they appreciate it.

If you'd like to contribute, start by searching through the issues and pull requests to see whether someone else has raised a similar idea or question.

If you don't see your idea listed, and you think it fits into the goals of this guide, do one of the following:

• If your contribution is minor, such as a typo fix, open a pull request.
• If your contribution is major, such as a new guide or a translation, start by opening an issue first. That way, other people can weigh in on the discussion before you do any work.

If you're writing content, see the style guide to help your prose match the rest of the Guides.

This site is powered by Jekyll. Running it on your local machine requires a working Ruby installation with Bundler.

Once you have that set up, run:

script/bootstrap
script/server

…and open http://localhost:4000 in your web browser.

This repo is currently maintained by @nayafia and @bkeepers, who have commit access. They will likely review your contribution. If you haven't heard from anyone in 10 days, feel free to bump the thread or @-mention a maintainer to review your contribution.

Discussions about the Open Source Guides take place on this repository's Issues and Pull Requests sections. Anybody is welcome to join these conversations. There is also a mailing list for regular updates.

Wherever possible, do not take these conversations to private channels, including contacting the maintainers directly. Keeping communication public means everybody can benefit and learn from the conversation.