The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org./web/20201028213312/https://docs.github.com/en/free-pro-team@latest/github/getting-started-with-github/finding-ways-to-contribute-to-open-source-on-github

Finding ways to contribute to open source on GitHub

You can find ways to contribute to open source projects on GitHub that are relevant to you.

In this article

Did this doc help you?

Help us make these docs great!

All GitHub docs are open source. See something that's wrong or unclear? Submit a pull request.

Make a contribution

Or, learn how to contribute.

Discovering relevant projects

If there's a particular topic that interests you, visit github.com/topics/<topic>. For example, if you are interested in machine learning, you can find relevant projects and good first issues by visiting https://github.com/topics/machine-learning. You can browse popular topics by visiting Topics. You can also search for repositories that match a topic you're interested in. For more information, see "Searching for repositories."

If you've been active on GitHub, you can find personalized recommendations for projects and good first issues based on your past contributions, stars, and other activities in Explore. You can also sign up for the Explore newsletter to receive emails about opportunities to contribute to GitHub based on your interests. To sign up, see Explore email newsletter.

Keep up with recent activity from repositories you watch and people you follow in the "All activity" section of your personal dashboard. For more information, see "About your personal dashboard."

You can connect with developers around the world in the GitHub Community Support to ask and answer questions, learn, and interact directly with GitHub staff.

Finding good first issues

If you already know what project you want to work on, you can find beginner-friendly issues in that repository by visiting github.com/<owner>/<repository>/contribute. For an example, you can find ways to make your first contribution to electron/electron at https://github.com/electron/electron/contribute.

Open source projects with mirrors on GitHub

Some open-source projects provide mirrors on GitHub.com in addition to their official repositories, which are hosted elsewhere.

Here are a few prominent repositories that are mirrored on GitHub.com:

To set up your own mirror, you can configure a post-receive hook on your official project repository to automatically push commits to a mirror repository on GitHub.

You can search repositories based on whether they're a mirror. To learn more, see "Searching for repositories."

Further reading

Did this doc help you?

Help us make these docs great!

All GitHub docs are open source. See something that's wrong or unclear? Submit a pull request.

Make a contribution

Or, learn how to contribute.