Nowadays, there are more than 180,000 open-source projects with 1,400 unique licenses available, and many of us are making use of Open-Source Software (OSS) every day.

OSS is probably one of the major differences in software engineering compared with other fields. It provides the benefit of laying the foundational work to bigger and better projects, introduces new library standards and thus interoperability, and it is capable of just saving a ton of work and increasing the joy of developing software. This huge and awesome world of OSS can sometimes feel intimidating.

But did you ever consider contributing to one of your favorite OSS and have your name listed as one of their contributors? Did you know that many big Open Source communities provide exciting projects for students? Have you ever heard about the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and the Linux Foundation (LFX) Mentorship program?

You don't know how to get started and are not feeling confident enough? The best time to start is right now!

In this talk, we invited

• Andreas Zimmerer: participant in LFX Mentorship Program for Spring ‘21 with PingCAP’s TiKV
• Liangda Wang: participant in GSoC 2021 with Apache ShardingSphere
• Ilaria Battiston: former GSoC student and now mentor for PostgreSQL

to share their journey to the Open-Source contribution and their experience and learnings with the programs, as well as tips for application!