The Basics 101

1.What does "Open Source" actually mean?

When a piece of software is Open Source, it means you can see its source code. That opens the door to a lot of awesome things:

• Anyone can freely read, reuse and modify open-source software, and send their improvements back to the project.
• Collaboration happens at scale: a whole community of shared ideas and expertise can form around a single project.
• You get a real chance to work on software the world depends on, and make a real-world impact.
• You learn best practices straight from the community, through feedback and advice from project collaborators.

2.I'm sold. Now how do I actually contribute?

Ahh, now that's the tricky part. Contributing to open source can be intimidating, especially for first-timers: you're often dealing with large codebases, and it's hard to know where to even start. Then the doubts creep in: am I good enough? What if I do something wrong?

This is exactly what PES Open Source aims to address. We want to provide a platform where members support each other, until everyone can comfortably and confidently make a real impact through open-source collaboration.