who -u

Dan Čermák

Agenda

• Why?
• How to be a Contributor
• What it means to be a Maintainer
• Take care of yourself
• Questions?

Why?

English is everywhere

Technology

• testing is important and insufficient
• real infra: and 🧙
• git is 👑
• backend: , ,
• frontend:
• enterprise: , SAP, Kotlin

…technology will change…

but one thing will never change

you have to work with people

Working with People in FLOSS

• their motivation ≠ your motivation
• their employer ≠ your employer
• their culture ≠ your culture
• their timezone ≠ your timezone

How to be a Contributor

• think about the why
• say hi 👋
• start small
• don't try changing the world (at first)

Pick the right project

• pick something where you have a stake
• project must want contributions

Community

• "just a bunch of people"
• have a common goal
• often no clear joining rules

How to communicate

• asynchronous: email, forums
• synchronous: chat, voice/video chat
• issue/bug/feature tracker(s)

avoid ambiguities!

Yeah, right

• keep it simple
• be kind to each other

There's no bad people

(with exceptions)

What it means to be a Maintainer

• you will have to learn to let go & share responsibilities
• take care of all the "boring" parts:
  • infra
  • documentation
  • onboarding & mentoring
  • issue triage & patch reviews
  • funding
  • moderation
• licenses/legal
• project & release management

Licenses

⚠️ IANAL applies ⚠️

• prescriptive vs permissive
• attribution?
• copyleft?
• patents?

👉️ choosealicense.com

How to make your project popular

• build something that people truly need/want
• marketing: talks, tutorials, evangelizing
• documentation, documentation, documentation

The Contributor Funnel

Recruiting contributors

• past impact does not matter, perceived future impact does
• contributors need a vision
• good onboarding experience encourages further onboarding
• prompt responses boost the chances of a contributor returning

Motivations for contributing

1. Ideology
2. Altruism
3. Fun
4. Kinship
5. Reputation
6. Reciprocity
7. Learning
8. Own-Use
9. Career
10. Pay

Staying motivated

Build a welcoming community

• enforce a code of conduct
• provide one place for your community to meet & talk
• document & enforce processes meticulously
• be present and friendly
• empower your contributors

Conflicts - One Bad Apple can spoil the Barrel

There will be conflicts

Rules enforcement & automation

Take care of yourself

• stay true to yourself & your motivation
• you must stay your top priority

1. Learn to say no
2. Take it easy and don't take it personally
3. Take it slow

Feedback

Receiving feedback

• thank, absorb and reflect
• don't defend yourself, adapt and discuss (if appropriate)

unfortunately:

• you will mostly get negative feedback, if at all
• only negative feedback can be crushing
• must train to not be personally bothered

Providing feedback

• criticize the code, not the person
• be constructive, clear and fact oriented
• be positive
• speak only on your behalf

a thank you never hurt anyone ❤️

This all sounds horrible!

It's a lot of fun

You will learn a lot

But only delve into open source as long as it is fun

Links and Further Reading

• uncurled by Daniel Stenberg
• motivations for contributing arXiv:2101.10291
• Measuring Engagement from Mozilla
• The Open Source Contributor Funnel by Mike McQuaid

dcermak.github.io/everything-you-didnt-learn-at-uni

Questions?