This is a submission for the 2024 Hacktoberfest Writing challenge: Contributor Experience

This is a submission for the 2024 Hacktoberfest Writing challenge: Maintainer Experience

Also available on dev.to here.

Since 2016, I curate a list of brazilian-maintained projects people can contribute to during hacktoberfest. The goal is to facilitate contributions from the brazilian dev community and also lower the entry barrier to the first open source contribution from Brazilians that might not speak english or don’t know where to start.

Contributing to open source can be a thrilling experience, opening the pull request, watch the review come through, improve what needs improving, discuss what could be discussed. I personally love all of that.

For a while now the list is maintained by the community. Folks will submit their projects for consideration and as long as they are maintained by Brazilians, valid (not archived), and have issues open, the project will be added to the list. No questions asked.

For me, hacktoberfest is only an excuse to give back to the community even if throughout the year I couldn’t do much. Unfortunately it is true, a lot of devs used to only focus on open source during hacktoberfest in order to win a shirt.

Years pass, priority changes, and hacktoberfest has not been the same. I’ve seen less and less projects looking for contributions in Brazil as well people looking to contribute.

But we are still out here.

I recently delivered a lightning talk at Python Brasil, the largest python event in Latin America. In 2 minutes I spoke about open source and Hacktoberfest. Announced that GitFichas, a collection of git study cards was going open source. And invited folks to participate in the contribution sprints that would happen the following day for a number of projects.

To my surprise, most of the people in the audience never heard of hacktoberfest before. And yes, I asked.

I feel that the hype changed. Most software built today relies on open source to exist. But with the changing world, or better yet, the changed world “after” COVID, where layoffs happen every year, money is tight, and uncertainties are plenty, folks don’t have the energy to make contributions. Their time is spent trying to make sure they can put food on the table.

I believe becoming contributor to a major project was a big goal for many pre-COVID, and it still might be, the thing is it’s not a high priority anymore. Because of this, open source seems be struggling, at least from the scope of Brazilian contributions that I can see.

Don’t get me wrong, a pull request merged is still one of my favorite accomplishments as a developer. Contributions can be big or small. Technical or not. But taking the time to get involved in a project feels like a luxury not many have.

Getting a shirt after 4 pull requests was the cherry on top of becoming a contributor. Without it how can you wear your PR to a conference and make a new friend using that as an ice breaker? Few will have the courage and curiosity to simply ask about open source and cool projects you’ve seen.

So am I wrong in believing open source is struggling? Am I wrong in saying that hacktoberfest contributions were focused on getting a free t-shirt? I don’t know, but I’d love to see more projects and contributors alike. Even if you are contributing only during hacktoberfest every year.