Daniele Scasciafratte - Contribute to Open Source: The Right Way

I always wanted to write that sentence and this book allowed me to do it!
This is not my first e-book, during the years I have written a few (for niches) in Italian - probably unknown to many, but important to have fun learning.
During high school (2005/2009) I wrote Principi di programmazione (Development Principles) and I released the second edition years later (I think very few people read it), I wrote it mainly for myself, but opted for a public format for it.
Later, I have written a guide of 12 pages for Python and Qt in Italian (developers stuff) and the 2 edition in Italian.
I have written also a guide of few pages WordPress per il cliente (WordPress for the customer) in 2012.
This is not my first rodeo, this time the topic is serious and big with a lot of my opinions and the explanation of my personal approach to things.

The book follows my mind flow from why and how I started and what I learned, based on my lectures but also a lot of experience, in few words this is my view about the topic.
In this way you have a (big) tutorial in the open source life to individually create your path.
There will be memes (I love them) and funny images like my writing style on the blog or talks, because this book is written in an informal way.
If you want to read it because I need to learn, make money and became famous here you will find nothing for you, check on Udemy or somewhere else.
A person not engaged, not interested on the long term is already failing on contributing.

I like to generalize often in my thoughts and discussions. So this book can seems like that but is my way of thinking to simplify the issue or the discussion itself. As a developer is important to see the real problem and the frame but they dont need to be managed together.

Information, suggestions, procedure, workflow, best practices.
It begins from the basic stuff to my (new) way of doing things and intro to do the first steps.
The technical terms will be explained (the first time) to help Newbies and non-tech people at their first approach to the matter.
The open world is open to everybody so this book will serve to explaining things.
See you at the index!

This book is licensed under the GPLv3 license because I like it, maybe not the best one for a book but is like a mention to remember how much this license changed the world.
Just to mention it, I made a tool called GH-License that help you to check if your repository include a license, if your repo on GitHub/Bitbucket/etc include it and to download automatically.

Remember a project that you can download with all the code doesnt mean that is open source if doesnt include a license. Without a license is a proprietary project!

Original GIMP project file (.xcf) available on GitHub and published to leanpub.com.

• Gameboy Color image by Blueamnesiac - https://www.deviantart.com/blueamnesiac/art/Nintendo-Game-Boy-Color-Teal-438531988
• Fipps Font by pheist - https://www.dafont.com/fipps.font
• 8-bit pusab by Seba Perez - https://www.dafont.com/8-bit-pusab.font
• 8 Bit Wonder by Joiro Hatgaya - https://www.dafont.com/8bit-wonder.font

This book is written in Markdown using ReText, released on GitHub and published to leanpub.com.
The language was reviewed using LanguageTool.org, Grammark and Sed.

With the open source term usually we refer to a lot of things, from software projects to others like open knowledge (as Wikipedia), so the term (open or open source) in this book as to be intended as a big view about the philosophy of the project itself and the approach of the community.

• https://twitter.com/Mte90Net
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielescasciafratte/
• https://www.reddit.com/user/Mte90/
• https://www.instagram.com/mte90/
• https://t.me/mte90
• Mastodon: https://hostux.social/@Mte90

I want to start with a chapter about me to let you understand the rest of the book (or the book itself).
I also hope to be inspirational and show new ways to approach the technology and open source philosophy.

I was born in 1990 in Rieti (Latium, Italy), a little city famous because is the Umbilicus Italiae (this is Latin and means the belly button of Italy), basically the center of Italy.
The city is near Rome, Terni and Aquila and apart from the name is famous all over the world for The Rape of the Sabine Women. The legend is that when Rome was founded there wasnt sufficient women for the citizen so they kidnapped there/around. This story was famous because many artists during the Renaissance used it as theme for their arts.

I think we are more famous for the Porchetta (food) and Lucio Battisti (singer that did also stuff in Spanish, English, French and German), and San Francis that moved in Rieti and built various sanctuaries and the first nativity in Greccio.

On 1990, the year of Home Alone, my grandmother said that as kid I was similar to that child, anyway I think I have grown a little better without thiefs trying to break in my home.

A footage that I did for my 25 years

I really like the Open Source world and this has created many problems because I joined many communities, I contributed to different projects, joined many events and sometimes this creates confusion about my role.
In my personal life I like to collect comics Italian, European and American, I have a large library with many comics in my room.
My passion about Open Source (or activism) is not clear to my friends because it doesnt revolve around sport (especially soccer that I hate a lot) and in Italy it seems that if you arent interested in following sports (or practicing them) you are like a loser. Anyway this create issues with my friends that doesnt know what I do for living or why I travel a lot.

This is probably the first reason why I am so easy to get involved, because what I do in Open Source has a real effect on the world and people, compared to this kind of interest that for me is not productive.

I attended the Liceo Scientifico Tecnologico (in Italy the school differs from the others, we have different schools based on the territory), completed in 2009 at ITI Celestino Rosatelli in Rieti with 68/100 as a final score of 5 years (thanks to the math that lowered my score), I did a little thesis (its quite common in Italy for the final exam in high school) and I was only one in a class of 27 people, I even took the laptop (purchased in 2006) for a demo on Lissajouss graphs on Windows XP virtualized on Sidux (the Linux distribution based on Debian Sid, that its now dead).