The first step in open source

Back in October, I read a blog by GSoC contributor. He talked about how he started, how he discovered open source, what he worked on, and how his journey unfolded. I already knew what open source was. I knew what GSoC was. I had watched the videos. I had read many blogs too. But knowing something and stepping into it are two very different things. I had this quiet dream of one day having that GSoC badge on my profile. And to have that, you need to contribute to open source. But my brain kept whispering: “What if you change one line of code and accidentally take down production?” There’s also this narrative you sometimes see online that students (especially from India) “pollute” open source with low-quality contributions. So my biggest fear wasn’t just breaking production with my code but also criticism . In that blog, he mentioned his first PR in OWASP BLT. It was a small simple pr. And I thought if I could find something like that, maybe even I can contribute. So, I explored the organ