Welcome to Women Who Code D.C.(WWCDC)'s open-source projects page. This repo will be used to create, manage, select and contribute to group projects that are both started and maintained by members of the Women Who Code D.C.community.
This repository was created to serve as a comfortable, safe and welcoming environment for new, experienced and future female open-source contributors. For many, the words 'Open Source' can be intimidating, especially for new programmers who may have a more limited skill set or may be new to working with groups as well as those who are experienced but may have been turned off by unpleasant stories about the larger open-source community's attitude towards female contributors.
This repo aims to not only help explain, streamline and simplify the process of building projects and tools with other members via git/github, but also to serve as an area within open-source where members can feel comfortable asking questions and working with others without having to deal with the type of bias that can be found in outside communities.
Open Source are organized into two categories: Internal open-source projects and External open-source projects.
Internal open-source projects are projects that are created and maintained by WWCDC' technology leads (a list of leads can be found here). They often have objectives that revolve around solving problems related to social causes. There is a structured protocol for contributing to these projects which can be found here and WWCDC members are allowed to submit ideas for future projects, the process of which is documented here.
External open-source projects are projects that are created and maintained by WWCDC member's outside of the technology lead ecosphere. They generally are personal projects that members are looking to enlist help or assistance with. These projects are not maintained or run by WWCDC tech leads and are therefor not subject to the same rules and procedures as internal projects. The process for having your project added to WWCDC's open-source project can be found here.
The main difference between the way these types of projects are separated is in how they are maintained. Internal projects are for the most part run by the organization while external projects are run by individual members. One option gives you less responsibility and requires less maintenance work while the other gives you more control over how you want you project organized and maintained and gives you more control over what is and isn't included in the project.