Contributing to Open Source Projects from Brazil: A Starter Guide
You’re in Brazil and want to start contributing. Focus on projects with active maintainers who reply within a day or two, then open small, clear pull requests. This works even with the time difference to Europe and the US.
Pick a project that matches your routine
Look for repos that already have Brazilian contributors or issues labeled “good first issue”. Check GitHub in the morning your time so you catch maintainers online in the afternoon their time.
- Browse the BrasilAPI repo and translate a missing endpoint description.
- Fix a broken link in the VS Code Portuguese language pack.
- Update an outdated example in the Django docs that still shows Python 2 syntax.
Make a short list of three projects you already use. Read their CONTRIBUTING.md once, then pick the smallest open issue that takes under an hour.
| Day of week | Best window for PRs | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Monday-Wednesday | 9am-11am BRT | US East Coast is just starting their day |
| Thursday | 8am-10am BRT | Europe maintainers still online before lunch |
Send your first pull request
- Fork the repo and create a branch named after the issue, such as fix-typo-in-readme.
- Make the change, then run any tests the project asks for in CONTRIBUTING.md.
- Write the PR description in English, one sentence on what changed and one line linking the issue.
- Post the PR before lunch your time so replies land while you’re still at the computer.
- If a maintainer asks for edits, push the fix in the same branch instead of opening a new PR.
Many Brazilian devs start with documentation or test fixes because those need less back-and-forth than new features.
