I recently had the opportunity to take CS 464, Open Source Software, as an Ecampus student at Oregon State University. I liked this class so much that I decided to write a review about it.

Course Structure

The course consisted of 4 short quizzes, weekly discussions, and a final portfolio project. I appreciated the minimalistic nature of the course structure. The flexible requirements allowed me to delve deeper into whatever open-source project I wanted.

Assignments

The assignments are mainly designed to make sure you are making progress toward your portfolio assignment and just generally interacting with open-source projects. Moreover, you had to submit a proposal beforehand for each assignment, which essentially was a draft. The proposals did a great job of keeping me on track. I struggle with starting tasks, so having these checkpoints was invaluable.

Discussions

The discussions served as additional check-ins, had some reading about open-source concepts, and let you explore open-source projects.

Portfolio Project

For your portfolio project, you had to contribute a significant change to an open-source project. I decided to contribute to a project I already used called homepage. Homepage allows you to create dashboards for your homelab.

One of the features that I like is that you can configure your dashboard from a docker-compose file. However, the docker integration lacked support to configure bookmarks from the compose file. I wrote this feature and hope to have it merged soon. You can see my pull request here.

Conclusion

If you are looking for an excuse to contribute to open-source, this course is for you. I have made open-source contributions in the past, but I needed more structure to ensure I made more significant contributions. This class has reignited my passion for open-source, and I am very thankful I took it.