What we teach
A typical Open Source Comes to Campus event has two parts: the morning tutorials, where we teach you how to use the tools and lingo associated with open source software development, and a contributions workshop where you and your fellow students choose an open source software project to work on, find a bug to tackle, and (hopefully) write your first patch, make your first documentation fix, or otherwise make a contribution to open source software.
The Tutorials
Start off the day with coffee, donuts, and a series of hands-on activities teaching you:
- Communication technologies like chat (IRC-based) and mailing lists
- Project organization, including version control, bug trackers, and individual roles within a project
- Command line skills so you know how to navigate Linux and similar systems
- The movement: where open source came from, and what makes it important
Mentors familiar with open source will be there to help you if you get stuck, and to tell you about their experiences in the community.
The Contributions Workshop
Bring your laptop and work on an open source software project. You can program, write documentation, meet other awesome open source contributors through IRC, discover and report usability problems, and more.
We'll provided you with carefully selected first tasks from projects with friendly maintainers and well-documented code. Many projects will have maintainers available, in person or remotely, throughout the event. This is a perfect opportunity to work on your problem-solving skills, and learn to collaborate with other open source programmers.
To get more details, check out our wiki.