Richard, a.k.a. Schneems, is well known in the Ruby world (1.9+ billion library downloads to his name!) and has spent years helping people contribute to open source. He joins us to talk about one of the busiest months for maintainers.

This month is Hacktoberfest. It's had a controversial past few years. Can you catch us up?

The event is massive. Hacktoberfest is a yearly promotion where developers earn a free shirt by getting commits into open source projects. It's intended to increase contributions but also places a large burden on maintainers. They get overwhelmed due to an influx of pull requests. To combat this, the rules were adjusted so only projects that opt-in via a hacktoberfest label can earn qualifying commits.

They have 40,000 shirts to give out this year. But some say those participants don't stick around. Some people love it, and some hate it.

What do you think? Are you a Hacktoberfest lover or hater?

The event provides anyone looking to start contributing to open source a fun excuse to begin and a good 'timebox.' That can be a powerful motivator to get someone to take their first steps.

Anyone who treats it as a game to be hacked is just taking away from the community. If you're only going to make four of the fastest pull requests possible and then not show up again for an entire year? That's not helpful.

What do we need to do to get more help from maintainers?

Beyond shirts and sponsorships, they need committed contributors who show up and take on some of their load. We need to help engage contributors who want to grow into maintainer roles. Those contributors need experience reproducing issues, documenting code they've never seen, engaging with the community, and reviewing pull requests. These are all necessary skills, and like any skill, they can be taught.

Beyond skills, what's the one thing holding people back from contributing more?

Time. I sent a survey to 66,000 CodeTriage subscribers, and the near-universal answer is people wanted more time. We need to build systems and structures that free up time for contributions.

Does that mean more companies need to give 20% time?

20% time was popularized by Google when they gave employees one day a week to work on whatever they want. 20% time doesn't work. Employees aren't incentivized to use that time, so it atrophies. If your company never promotes you because of your open source work, they're not really paying you to work on open source.

One approach is working with contributors to help them build a system that works with their life. Before the pandemic, I could never find the time to work out. Once I found systems that work for me, I consistently exercise three days a week. Open source is like that too. When you have a system that supports you, you find ways to make the time.

Is anything else holding people back?

Absolutely. It's scary. People are afraid of doing something new in public. They might not openly state this as a problem, though. One mindset shift is to reframe the work. It's not like public speaking. Often getting anyone's attention can be a challenge. It's more like you're working in a cafe in public. Everyone around you is probably too busy to notice when you make a mistake. Plus, they're making mistakes too.