When Startups Go Open Source and Merge Your Code

This Open Source thing is the real deal.

I have previously written about how easily you can contribute to other open source projects, but contributing code to startups and help them succeed?
Well yes, that too.

One of the tech newsletters I’m subscribed to mentioned scanr, a young OCR as a Service startup that gives you an API to send pictures to and get back text.
Well doesn’t that sound like an interesting hack for the weekend? Sure does!

Curious as I am, taking a dive in their documentation shows they are very tightly built on open source solutions, and further sniffing around reveals they also share much of this as open source, including their programming SDK bundles, on Github. Where else?

Being me, I just had to take a look at their Node.js module. It’s quite simple, but examining the code immediately shows some issues. Minor stuff, but left un-attended. Fixing it up is so trivial and simple, so why not? why not?

There goes that Pull-Request thing which magically merges my fixes with that repository:

Contribution is warmly appreciated and merged.
Another good thing we did for the world, and for another person.

Goodluck scanR!

Share with me! What repositories and projects did you contribute to recently?
I’m genuinely interested to know what you’re working on.