Reflection on working with H/FOSS
“How have the experiences in this course and in working with your Open Source Community in particular helped to cultivate the above civic dispositions and skills that will help to prepare you for a life of civic engagement?”
Firstly, I would like to address how working with H/FOSS communities (specifically the NumPy community) has enabled me to cultivate various aspects of civil dispositions. Working with a large codebase and looking to joining such a large community of experienced developers/contributors forces one to engage with the unfamiliar. There are so many moving parts and different activities going on in an H/FOSS community that it can be daunting to find where to start contributing, but having a community, such as NumPy, that is very welcoming and encourages new contributors sparks that intellectual curiosity that makes one want to contribute. Further one must take on a significant amount of personal responsibility honesty and empathy to contribute effectively.
In addition to the development of civic dispositions, contributing to H/FOSS and being part of a H/FOSS community fosters a set of civic skills that are crucial to be a professional in our world today. The ability to be apart of a project that is utilized globally enables one to learn skills such as listening effectively, adapting to change, enables one to see local-global connections, and initiate and implements change. Working with a diverse group of people also allows one to work across differences to achieve goals for a common good, apply intellectual inquiry to civic issues, and engage, bridge, resolve differences with understanding, diplomacy, and civility.
The most beneficial part of working with and contributing to H/FOSS is that the civic skills/dispositions learned can transcend the project and can be applied to one's own life. Being a responsible, honest, and empathetic person are goals everyone should strive for, and by working with H/FOSS projects we can foster and grow these dispositions in a meaningful way.
