Law Student Turned Opensource Maven: Unveiling the Journey to Discovering My Niche
Opensource embraces the free culture of how knowledge is shared. Tributes to Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux Kernels) who spearheaded such using source codes. This is a great reason why Opensource Community Africa 2023 (OSCAFEST ’23) gathered people from all walks of life to celebrate…. Wait what is Opensource, why is it so important, and why the heck am I even curious about it as a law student? You’ll get these questions answered as we embark on the journey.
This article is about my experience in the just concluded OSCAFEST ’23, and how it has shaped my perception towards Opensource as a law student cum software developer. It does not in any manner bother with the technical aspect of contributing to Opensource. Still, it consists of steps and resources that will be of help to newbies willing to be prospective contributors to Opensource.
The journey...
Before OSCAFEST’23, I heard people countless times preaching the gospel about open source. As an amateur who still struggles with JavaScript (probably because of my non-technical background), I marvel at how software engineers talk about how great it is and how it is considered to be a prerequisite for anyone who wants to be in the software development field. Surprisingly, I also saw technical writers especially those who are not in the software development space join in the evangelism. Then, I did a thorough research on what it entails.
Not only was I surprised at how little drops become a mighty ocean, but also thrilled about the various species of fish the ocean can accommodate. Opensource showcases how various people can contribute to a cause and achieve a great result. When an individual creates a project, in most cases software-related ones, deploys its source code to an open-source platform like GitHub, or Gitlab for collaboration from interested persons who intends to contribute to it.
Such a project receives marvelous contributions the project owner doesn’t even initially anticipate. These contributions have led to the birth of software of immense value like Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and VLC media player. But when it comes to other contributors' right to use, modify, and redistribute this source code piqued my interest as a law student and I had the instinct that this needed to be addressed.
At the OSCAFEST’23, I was absent for the first two days because my exams made me not have the ticket but my brother did. Luckily for me, I finished my exams on the second day of the event and the third day turned out to be in my favor and not for my brother’s. The event was amazing and it remains one of the greatest things that had happened to me this year. Apart from the memories it created, I learned learning can take different dimensions. Everything doesn’t have to be technical as a slanderous tweet on Twitter suggested it to be. The owner of that tweet owes me 99 strokes of cane though.
The day started blissfully when I saw Karen Chukwu hosts the event. And the sequel of the sessions that took place didn’t disappoint as various speakers dished out interesting topics. As a law student, the presentation by Karen Chukwu and her colleague Chidima Olisa on "Intellectual Property Rights & Open Source (the nitty-gritty)" piqued my interest the most. The rights that developers have in their contributions to the Opensource project were briefly discussed by both speakers.
This only served to reinforce my already acquired knowledge of intellectual property from school. The main thing I learned was the different kinds of licenses available in open source. Oracle v. Google (a case you should read) was one of the intriguing cases that arose between the two tech titans that Karen discussed in the presentation. Just as contributing to Opensource appears to be, I came to understand that the licensing regime is a key component of it. Thank you, Katwig & Dale, for that enlightening session.
Putting acquired knowledge into practice.
After OSCAFEST'23, most of the queries in my curiosity bank were resolved. I have the chance to delve more deeply into Opensource's legal considerations. Learned about different permissive and restrictive licenses provided. As I understood most of the licenses, I started going through active projects on GitHub scouting for whether licenses are included in projects and if they do align with the project’s goal.
The MIT licenses seemed common as usual because project owners feel that others should be able to use, modify and redistribute source codes freely with no conditions other than copyright notice. I discovered some projects don’t have licenses and I can advise contributors not to contribute to such projects, but rather raise issues on the inclusion of licenses or make a pull request including the licenses to project owners to accept. However, I realized that other projects do have licenses but looking at the entirety of the project an MIT license doesn’t align with the project’s goal. Other licenses do fit this project than an MIT license.
As ignorance is not an excuse in law, I started raising issues and making pull requests to these projects to make them aware of the consequences. Fortunately, I saw a project on Twitter named “Igbo-Api” which is stored in a GitHub repository by @ijemmaohno. I dived into the repository, understood the project’s goal, and checked if it has a license. I noticed that an Apache 2.0 license was included. That’s apt for the project but on further perusal, I noticed that in the license file, the Copyright Year and the name of the Copyright owner weren’t stated.
I raised the issue and she assigned the it to me. Even though it was a one-line fix, I was happy that this was my first contribution to Opensource. Forked and cloned the project, fixed the issue, and made the pull request (PR). The PR was accepted and a commendation was made that that was a great work. That contribution is essential to ascertain the year the work got fixated and to whom the copyright is vested.
The Secret Sauce in Opensource
This subheading sounds cliché, but there is actually a sauce behind Opensource which is the immense value it brings and the knowledge one needs to contribute. For the latter part, I thank @bdougieYO. The link he presented at OSCAFEST’23 was of great help and cleared the doubt I had on how to go about contributing to open source. I recommend you read it (it will be part of the resources below).
Resources
The resources below will guide you in learning what Opensource entails:
To understand the legal side of Opensource, read this GitHub doc
To learn about the licenses there are in Opensource, read the DigitalOceans page
On how to contribute to open source project, you can check out this website page given by Brian Douglas
Conclusion
And that’s a wrap! I hope that was an interesting read and inspiring enough for you (especially if you have a non-technical background) to look for areas in Opensource to contribute to. If there is any question about that, kindly reach me through Twitter | Instagram | Gmail.