Growing a contributor base in modern open source

Healthy Open Source

A walkthrough of the Node.js Foundation’s base contribution policy.

How to manage casual contributors to open source projects

Try these strategies to better utilize contributions from your project's episodic volunteers.

Figuring out how to contribute to open source

Figuring out how to contribute to open source

Twelve tips for growing communities around your open source project | Ben Balter

Publishing code isn't enough. Twelve practical tips to attract users, welcome contributors, and grow a healthy open source community.

How to become an amazing contributor (to an open source project)

It's a busy morning here in New York City. My email inbox is full of pleasant surprises. The first is a patch for one of my open source projects. A second will appear this afternoon. A third should come late at night—or maybe tomorrow–from a new contributor. Alongside my day job, I contribute and manage open source projects. The number of projects I work on has grown from a couple of small tools to well over a dozen in the last three years. Open source has become a great way to learn new technology, experiment with modern software development practices, and, of course, meet other like-minded engineers. I find that seeing great contributors send working and tested code provides a unique feeling of accomplishment, as powerful as having many satisfied users of my own applications or strong revenues posted by the employer that pays my bills.

Finding Users for Your Project

Help your open source project grow by getting it in the hands of happy users.

DanielFeichtinger/Waldo

Contribute to DanielFeichtinger/Waldo development by creating an account on GitHub.

What kind of Software should we fund?

Laurie Voss, who was one of the founder of NPM, the Javascript package repository that is now run by Microsoft, has written a longer post about an idea about how to fund Free Software that I found interesting. It’s worth reading if you have some time and makes good points even though I will critique […]

hatk-dev/hatk

Contribute to hatk-dev/hatk development by creating an account on GitHub.

hatk-dev/hatk

Contribute to hatk-dev/hatk development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub’s one-dimensional view of open source contributions – Wes McKinney

TL;DR One of the most harmful parts of the GitHub platform is the code contribution calendar. This “hacker score card” overemphasizes the value of commits over the other kinds of important contributions to open source projects, like doing code reviews and discussing bugs and new features on the issue tracker.