How to contribute to open source as a student

Are you a student of any study field looking for an opportunity to add to your early experience in open-source software? You’ve come to the right place. Read this article and learn why to contribute to ONLYOFFICE and how you can do this.

Benefits of contributing to open source

Contributing to the open-source project is a rewarding way to learn, share, and build valuable experience. You can:

• Exercise knowledge, gain new skills or train and improve the existing ones.
• Learn from the experts.
• Make new contacts, find a mentor.
• Get research material.
• Build up your portfolio/reputation for future career.
• Improve the software you already use.
• Get the software for free.
• Just get some fun and personal satisfaction.

Contribute to open source with ONLYOFFICE

ONLYOFFICE provides a lot of opportunities to contribute to the project to all young enthusiasts, without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, or disability status. What matters is your enthusiasm and performance.

If you’re an IT / tech student

Option 1: Develop your own plugin or macros for ONLYOFFICE Docs to add extra useful functionality to the editors. Refer to API documentation

Fast fact: this year, we launched 2 development projects on macro and plugin building in Open Source Promotion Plan, a popular summer program in China. Learn more and stay tuned for future updates.

Option 2: Find and report bugs and issues for all our solutions (web, desktop, mobile) and help us improve ONLYOFFICE for you and other users. How to report issues

Option 3: Become an ONLYOFFICE beta or/and usability tester to help us test the upcoming features and solutions. How to apply

What you can practice: coding, developing, API and Git usage, testing procedures, debugging.

If you’re a marketing / PR / media student

Option 1: Join our Campus Ambassador Program: help us build influence at your university and beyond through organizing activities and recommending talents. Apply now / First program results

Option 2: Collaborate with us on the ONLYOFFICE project promotion by creating blog articles and reviews, videos in different formats, social media posting, etc. Contact us via marketing@onlyoffice.com to discuss the details.

What you can practice: planning and organizing campus activities and events, team management, public speaking, content writing, blogging, social media operation and promotion.

If you are a linguistics student

Option 1: Help us translate the ONLYOFFICE interface and documentation into your native language to make it accessible anywhere in the world. How to translate

Option 2: Write the documentation such as user guides, instructions, tutorials, etc. for ONLYOFFICE Help Center. How to apply

What you can practice: translating, tech writing, information processing, researching.

If you are a design student

Create your own beautiful form templates and share them with others though our form library. How to work with ONLYOFFICE forms

What you can practice: template design, element composition, layout.

Get a contributor reward

We would like not only to provide you with useful experience, but we also think all contributors deserve a fair reward. By contributing to ONLYOFFICE you can get:

• a free ONLYOFFICE Home Server;
• a free ONLYOFFICE cloud;
• a discount for ONLYOFFICE self-hosted solutions;
• financial rewards (if your are legally allowed to receive payments, it is discussed individually).

Do you maybe know someone who will be interested in contributing to the open-source ONLYOFFICE project? You are welcome to share this post to your friends and classmates to help them find new opportunities in open source.