Forking a Project
When a project is hosted as a public Github repository only the project owner and certain admin users can make changes to the repository. This doesn't mean other users can't contribute to the project.
The general workflow for doing this is to create your own copy of the project, called a Fork, then create your own local copy of your project, called a clone, make changes to your copy then push the changes back to your fork, finally requesting that your changes get pulled by the project maintainers into the original project, known as a Pull Request.
Forking allows you have your own working copy of a publicly hosted Git project. Unlike a clone, which under most circumstances is considered a read-only copy of the original project, (you can make changes to your own copy, but not give them back to the original repository) a fork is linked to the original repository and is afforded additional permissions for sending changes back to the original project.
Forking is not an inherent function of Git, rather it is part of the web hosting services that provide Git services (such as Github, Bitbucket, Gitlab etc). It is a special form of project clone.
In theory you can always email a project maintainer and ask them to apply changes you've made in your clone but most likely you'll just irritate them when there's an existing sytem in place for contributing.
You can read more detailed information at the links below.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/6286877
Forking a Github (or other Git hosting service) project is very easy. Visit the URL for the project, for this lesson we'll use this project as we'll be modifying it later, then click the fork button to create your copy.
https://github.com/drentsoft/WDM_git_tutorial
At the top right of the project page there is a button that says Fork with a number representing how many people have already forked the project.
Click the button and if you're logged in you'll be presented with a page with a fun graphic while the project is copied to your account.
As an additional point of interest if you click on the number next to fork you can see a list of the most active forks for the project.