extraterrestrialicious web apps

I love open source. And I love contributing to open source projects. Every time one of my patches is accepted into a project, I can’t help but smile.

My latest contribution is a small feature that makes use of a database index, where previously this product would fetch every record. It’s quite an improvement and if I can say so myself, the code is pretty neat. The patch was accepted quickly and my latest good deed*can now be enjoyed by many people.

This shows the true strength of open source and it makes crystal clear why it is a good methodology. The fix took me just a few hours, and it was because of an itch I needed scratching. Because of the open source license, my contribution improves the very product I use, which benefits all the other users too. Every tiny improvement by just one guy in his spare time multiplies, which in the end yields quality and features that are unparalelled in the closed-source world. And it’s all for free! Amazing.

Kudos to GitHub too for making forking so rediculously easy.

* actually not my latest. I fixed a bug on another project too, but it isn’t accepted yet.