Introduction

This week in our Open Source Software Development class, my group kept working on Oppia and made more progress finding new down issues to contribute to. I also spent some time reflecting on The Cathedral and the Bazaar, and I looked into how big companies manage their open source work with OSPOs. Overall, it was a solid week with a mix of coding and learning more about how the open source world works behind the scenes.

Project Progress

I’m still working on the Oppia project with two classmates, and lately we’ve been looking into GitHub issues to see where we can help. We were working on one to fix a front-end issue, but before we finished, someone else swooped in and submitted a pull request. This was a frustrating experience but was a lesson learned that we will apply to our efforts going forward.

Now we’re working on another issue and I have completed the coding for it, and am waiting for my classmates to test it. It’s been a good team effort overall—figuring out how to split up work and slowly get more comfortable with the codebase.

Reflection on The Cathedral and the Bazaar

Reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar this week gave me a new perspective on how Oppia runs. One quote that stuck with me was “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” That really hits home with Oppia—there are so many contributors and reviewers that bugs get spotted and solved fast.

Another big one was “release early, release often.” Oppia encourages small, frequent contributions instead of waiting to submit something huge. That’s made me feel a lot more comfortable jumping in and pushing code—even if it’s not perfect, you’ll get feedback and improve as you go.

The Coffeehouse

Clause Warren talked about open source being like a coffeehouse—an open space where people hang out, share ideas, and work together. That’s somewhat how Oppia feels. Many of the issues have active discussion, which can make it harder at times to claim one.

It doesn’t feel like you have to be an expert to contribute—just curious and willing to learn. That vibe makes it way less intimidating, especially as a student.

OSPOs

This week I also looked into what Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) actually do in real companies. I checked out Google, Microsoft, and Red Hat, which each have their own OSPO team.

At Google, they’ve got a big team that helps developers manage open source code, deal with licenses, and run big projects like TensorFlow and Chromium.

Microsoft also has an OSPO which helps developers at the company contribute to open source safely and legally.

Red Hat is also focused on open source, so their OSPO is focused on making sure they give back to the community and help maintain the projects they rely on.

OSPOs are seemingly teams at companies that make sure that things are running correctly and following policies. They help with rules, support devs who want to contribute, and make sure the company is actually contributing to the open source community.

Going Forward

We’re hoping to finish our current issue this week and start a new one. Open source continues to be challenging and fun, as I am enjoying having a real-world experience.