[Mai '21]

Iyad makes FOSS and takes our Twitter mic from May 26 to June 2. Thank you, Iyad!

Please tell us about yourself

Hello, I’m Iyad Ahmed. 20 years old from Egypt, FOSS developer, Engineering student and freelancer.

What are you working on right now?

Currently working on Bforartists fork of Blender, UI code in Python and C. I’m also working on patches for Blender itself, as well as personal projects.

How did you first discover FOSS?

I have been interested in programming from an early age so I heard about FOSS since then.

What prompted you to start contributing to FOSS?

I was working on a personal project and it caught the attention of Trinumedia studio. All went well and I started contributing and expanding knowledge since then.

Why should others get involved with FOSS?

I think FOSS is a great opportunity for any developer to gain real world knowledge.

How should they get started?

They should explore FOSS projects they are interested in. Then start building it and experiment, be comfortable with version control and development environment. Contact with developers and users and work on good-first-issues (issues that are easy) in tracker.

What difficulties and limitations do you see with FOSS?

Getting into FOSS development may be difficult at first. You have to jump in on an ongoing project, so the process has to be gradual.

A limitation is working on FOSS can be voluntary so it might not suit everyone.

How can they be solved?

To solve the difficulty the process should be gradual. Get development environment ready, be comfortable with version control, be comfortable with reading and understanding code, then work on good first issues.

The limitation can be solved if you join something like Google Summer of Code, or find a sponsor, often the project will hire contract freelancers.

Where do you see difficulties in contributing?

The difficulty in contributing is having a sense of what the project is about, and how the code base is structured. If the project code has documentation on it, then it is perfect. Also it helps if one is already a user of the project with knowledge about different areas.

What does a perfect day off look like?

A perfect day off is a day where one can just relax and think about personal projects and other habits.