Have you contributed to open source as a tester?

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Check out my first article with the Ministry of Testing, “@imaabasiee, 'How to contribute to open source projects as a software tester”, which breaks down exactly how QA professionals can make meaningful contributions to open source projects, even without writing code.

What You’ll Learn:

  • Practical ways to contribute: bug reporting, testing PRs, improving docs
  • How to find beginner-friendly projects and get support from maintainers
  • Real lessons from a tester’s first open-source experience

After reading, share your thoughts:

  • Have you contributed to open source as a tester? Share your experience!
  • What’s the biggest hurdle you’ve faced when testing open-source projects?
  • Any tips for finding tester-friendly OSS communities?
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I have contributed, by creating small tools.
For one, bug reporting needs to be less offensive as opposed to being neutral. Because there are hardly any neutral words.
While providing a screenshot, with some logs is a routine practice. Instead of writing the steps to repoduce, a video (screen recording) with all the steps leading to the bug could be a good idea as some biases could be reduced. Also providing data about the system like disk usage, memory etc. could be useful in anlaysing the issue in addition to logs. Since most of these things had system calls I used Linux in my open source project

Challenges: I needed collaborators to take this tool to the next level
I also think writing it in python and adding some more dependencies could make it more powerful
I think the ministry of testing can be a good place for tester friendly oss communities

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I contributed by providing bug reports, bug fixes and small tools.

For Cucumber, I provided a bug fix for the Ruby implementation: At some point, the command cucumber started to crash. I used the environment variable $CUCUMBER_COLORS, and the command threw an exception when $CUCUMBER_COLORS was used.

I also created some small tools, primarily for myself: A Ruby gem to work with INI files and one to echo file content to the terminal in hex code & the corresponding (UTF-8) character.

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I would like to do that, but i dont know how.

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@imaabasiee ! What an amazing article. :clap: I am in the middle of a job-hunt and career transition, and I couldn’t be more inspired to try out open-source contributions :glowing_star:

What you shared were super detailed and will definitely help anyone who wanted to start polishing their testing skills or simply gain experience. Thank you very much! :bouquet:

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Had this tab open since several days and finally gave it a read!
Great write up @imaabasiee
I recently dived into this topic too but Hacktober never occurred to me. I liked the 3 links you posted where people can find open source projects. When i was looking for a project, most I came across were stale.
And because of those 3 links, I’ve added your article to one of my own write ups as a bookmark :sweat_smile:

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99% of Engineers want to use Open Source Tools. :white_check_mark:
99% of Engineers don’t contribute to Open Source Tools. :cross_mark:
Contributing to it is damn easy but most people are confused how to start. :orange_heart:

Yes, I have contributed to open source as a tester.

Have tried various forms of contributions (doc, bugs, retesting, PR, etc.)

I think your article is very valuable for testers who want to learn how to do it.

I also gave a talk about my experience and various possibilities that open source offers: How Can Testers Contribute to Open-Source Projects | Rahul Parwal | TestFlix 2023 #softwaretesting - YouTube

Also, I also wrote a similar idea on my blog here: Open Source Portfolio Ideas for Testers - Rahul’s Testing Titbits

P.S. 99% is just a made up number here but I added it to denote how most testers don’t want to contribute to open source.

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I have contributed to only one open-source project as a tester for now.
I feel some satisfaction knowing that I am contributing to something meaningful.
I am looking forward to exploring and contributing to more projects.

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