Patrick's Programming Blog

24 Pull Requests

24 Pull Requests
  1. Blogging for Benjamin Competition
  2. Why I'm Grateful to Work on the Web
  3. 24 Pull Requests
  4. Update Downloadable Product's Expiration Date in WooCommere
  5. Get Lost in the Flow and Work for More Than a Salary
  6. Why A Plugin's Popularity Matters
  7. Why You Should (Or Shouldn't) Use Premium Plugins
  8. WooCommerce Terms & Conditions
  9. Only Ship to Continental United States with WooCommerce
  10. Just Talk
  11. Why I Love Jetpack
  12. Making Jetpack Better
  13. Remove Billing Address for Free Virtual Orders in WooCommerce
  14. Notify Admin of Customer Address Change in WooCommerce
  15. Open Your Self Up To New Possibilities
  16. 2013 Resolutions Review
  17. Create a Community
  18. Tips for Starting a Community
  19. The Intent of Goals
  20. Create The Ultimate Invoicing System Using WooCommerce
  21. Change From Address in Ninja Forms
  22. Work With People Who Inspire You
  23. Contact Form 7 & MailPoet Integration
  24. Monotasking
  25. Giving Back to The Community
  26. Adding Fuctionality to Lean Plugins
  27. Choose Stripe For a Payment Gateway
  28. A Dip Into Entrepreneurship
  29. Reward Yourself
  30. Blogging for Benjamin Plugin
  31. Blogging for Benjamin Wrap Up

Yesterday, in my post about why working on the web is so great I mentioned a tool called GitHub. While GitHub is only a tool it is a really awesome tool because it makes it unbelievably easy to version control your code and for another user to submit a patch (aka pull request) or report issues to you. Increased collaboration is important for any project but it's even more important for open source projects.

Software isn't Free

It should come as no surprise that software isn't free. It takes many programming hours to build new features, many hours to diagnose and fix bugs, hours to plan the roadmap, and many many hours of support helping your users.

There are some great open source projects that have highly efficient monetizations models. Just look at the totally free software WordPress; they have WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, Akismet, VaultPress, etc, that bring in money. But for many open source projects there isn't a good monetization model and without cash flow to support the hours of development the project dies.

Now what happens for projects that don't have a good business model? Well unless they have a dedicated community to keep it going these projects quickly become outdated and become security vulnerabilities. And the last thing that you want is an outdated piece of software that leaves your site ripe for a hack.

Enter 24 Pull Requests

This is where 24 Pull Requests comes in. You can think of 24PR like an advent calendar but for pull requests. The idea here is to encourage you to look at the open source projects that you use everyday and to submit a pull request! There are so many great open source projects that need just a little extra oomph to get some work done.

Take a moment to think about all of the plugins or themes you use on your sites, now think about all the libraries these plugins & themes use, now think about the server side software that runs your site. You're probably using 100 different pieces of technology most (if not all) of which are open source.

Look through the 774 projects currently listed on 24 Pull Requests and try to find one that you use. If you're familiar with the WordPress world you'll probably know some of these:

You Don't Need to be a Super Programmer

Many of these projects have plenty of issues that can be solved with 30 minutes of effort. Or if you don't have time for that then just fix some white space! You can make the spacing consistent so that another developer will have an easier time reading the code. Honestly, every little bit helps.

Walking the Talk

While I'm going to primarily dedicate myself to the Blogging for Benjamin contest this month I do plan on doing some contributions. In fact I've just submitted a pull request to WooCommerce.

Remember that nothing is free and make sure to support your software.

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