How do I feel about working in an open source project?

It is my first time to work on an open source project, so everything is new and exciting for me. It has been almost a month since I work on RTEMS project. Definitely 5 stars to my mentors because they are very helpful. Also, other people are always willing to help which is really impressive. I understand why helping each other is one of the most essential spirits of open source community.

As a developer working on an open source community, every work is preferred to be public:

1. Email is public. Normally, email is preferred to be public. As a developer, I subscribe two important mailing, user@rtems.org and devel@rtems.org. user@rtems.org is for communication between users and developers. For example, if a user has any questions, suggestions and comments, he/she would send email to user@rtems.org, so I can get feedback from a user immediately as a developer. As for devel@rtems.org, it is used by developers, we can talk about technical questions like how to fix a bug here.

2. All code is public. Since code is pushed on github, it is easy for my mentors and other people to review it. Also, if a user who has a technical background is interested in how the project works, it is easy for he/she to get access to its source code. Notice: copyright belongs to a specific developer or an organization.

3. Code is supposed to be consistent. As a part of developer team, my code is supposed to be consistent with other developers. For example, details like white space and column limits should be aware. It is not only making the code more consistent and professional, but also more readable for later developers.

It is just a beginning for me to work on an open source project, I will keep going! 😊