Hello! I am a senior in NYU CAS majoring in Computer Science with a minor in Economics.
This week, our class focused on the final presentations from each student group. It was an inspiring and fulfilling experience to see what everyone had contributed to their selected open source projects.
Last week, three groups delivered their presentations: Preswald, and Hugging Face. All of the groups did a great job presenting their work. Each team clearly and effectively explained the contributions they made to their chosen open source projects. I was really impressed by how deeply each group engaged with the open source community, actively collaborating with other contributors and navigating the process of making meaningful contributions.
This week in class, we discussed the role of open source in the business world. I found it fascinating how companies are increasingly integrating open source strategies into their operations—not only to leverage innovation and reduce costs, but also to build communities around their technologies. Open source is no longer just a hobbyist or academic pursuit; it’s now a strategic asset. Businesses like Microsoft, Red Hat, and Google are actively investing in open source projects, not just by releasing code but also by creating Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) to manage contributions, licensing, and community engagement. I’m starting to see how open source participation can also be a powerful learning and career-building tool for developers like us.
Reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar made me rethink how software can be built. One thing that really stood out to me was the idea that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” I’ve definitely seen this play out while contributing to AutoGen with my group. Every time we put our code out there—whether it’s a small fix or a bigger feature—someone notices something we didn’t catch. At first it felt a little scary to have strangers looking at our work, but I’ve started to see it as a huge advantage. The more people involved, the better the outcome. It’s kind of amazing how fast things improve when people are openly collaborating and not trying to do everything in a closed-off way.
This week was the first one after spring break, and our team quickly got back into the rhythm of working on our open source project. We had two meetings to check in on progress, assign tasks, and support each other technically. One of my key accomplishments this week was submitting a pull request to our GitHub repository, which was successfully reviewed and merged. It was my first time contributing code to this particular project, and I initially struggled with understanding the project’s codebase and contribution guidelines. I spent some time carefully reading through the documentation and previous pull requests to learn the style and expectations. I also reached out to my teammates during our meetings to clarify a few points. With their help and some extra effort on my part, I was able to get the PR finalized and accepted, which felt really encouraging. While working on the project, I also browsed the issue tracker and found additional issues that match my skill set. I plan to start working on those next week.
In parallel, I continued working on my personal Wikipedia contribution. One challenge I faced was understanding how to properly cite reliable sources and meet Wikipedia’s neutral tone requirements. I referred back to the Wikipedia editing guidelines and looked at examples from well-edited pages, which helped me improve my own edits. I’m gradually becoming more confident navigating the platform.
Olivier Poupeney’s talk on FINOS gave me a much better understanding of how open source is shaping financial services. It was interesting to see how banks—typically super protective of their tech—are now collaborating on open-source projects to improve efficiency and innovation. The 2024 State of Open Source in Financial Services report made it clear that while adoption is growing, there are still challenges, like security concerns and internal resistance.
Over the past week, our team focused on searching for a suitable open source project that we can consistently contribute to as a group. After some discussion and research, we settled on AutoGen AI as our chosen project. We believe it’s a promising platform that aligns with our interests and skill sets.
Once we decided on AutoGen AI, we started looking for relevant issues we could tackle for our first contribution. We faced a bit of a challenge finding issues appropriate for our skill levels—ones that were unassigned and also open for new contributors. This process took longer than expected, but we eventually identified a suitable issue that I could begin working on.
My small contributions have been focus on non coding contributions. I have contributed on Wikipedia and on OpenStreetMap. I have been translating and adding new articles on Wikipedia about my favorite Chinese writer. Also, I have added locations on OpenStreetMap about a location around my home in Beijing, China.
I have been want to contribute to open-source projects to improve my coding skills and collaborate with experienced developers. However, finding a project that matches my skill level has been challenging. Many repositories assume prior knowledge, making it difficult to get started. Even beginner-friendly issues often require familiarity with the project’s structure. Navigating large codebases and reaching out to maintainers can feel intimidating. To overcome this, I’ve started focusing on smaller, well-documented projects and engaging with the community. Though the learning curve is steep, I believe persistence and active participation will help me make meaningful contributions over time.
As I explore open source projects, I find that each presents unique challenges and opportunities.
The in-class Git exercise was a solid hands-on way to really get comfortable with version control. Setting up the repo and making commits was pretty straightforward, but branching and merging made me think more about how teams actually collaborate on projects. Seeing how git log –graph visualized the branches was cool, and dealing with merge conflicts was a good reminder that things don’t always go smoothly—you have to be careful and deliberate when resolving them. Also, jumping between branches and commits showed how Git tracks everything, which makes it way less scary to experiment. Overall, this was a great way to reinforce Git basics and feel more confident using it in real projects.
This week our team have created a Firefox browser extention that adds an image to all whitehouse.gov pages for accountability.
The image can be dragged freely, and its position is saved even after a page refresh.
whitehouse.gov pages.In my understanding, having such a document for a project is like a law that outlines expected behaviors and establishes a standard for interaction within the community. The benefits could be promoting inclusivity and diversity atmosphere, providing mechanisms for conflic resolution, enhancing community trust and safety, and encouraging communication.
In my understanding,the term open source is a global community of collaboration and innovation. To me, open source represents accessibility, transparency, and the power of collective knowledge. It’s a fascinating ecosystem where people from different backgrounds contribute their skills to create something that benefits everyone.
Open source software maintain freedom to use, modify, and distribute the software without restrictions. This openness leads to rapid innovation, as developers around the world can identify and fix bugs, add new features, and optimize performance without being bound by a single company’s timeline. It also promotes transparency, allowing anyone to audit the code for security vulnerabilities or ethical concerns.