{"id":74028,"date":"2018-09-28T13:52:13","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T20:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/open.microsoft.com\/?p=74028"},"modified":"2025-03-03T16:17:27","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T00:17:27","slug":"hacktoberfest-tips-for-growing-open-source-communities-in-october-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opensource.microsoft.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/28\/hacktoberfest-tips-for-growing-open-source-communities-in-october-and-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"Hacktoberfest: Tips for growing open source communities in October and beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For the last four years, DigitalOcean and GitHub have spearheaded Hacktoberfest<\/a>, a month-long open source initiative that encourages people of all experience levels to contribute to open source projects. The premise is straightforward: open five pull requests (PRs) in any GitHub-hosted open source project and earn a limited-edition Hacktoberfest T-shirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People have credited Hacktoberfest for getting them into open source \u2013 in fact, many Hacktoberfest PRs created by first time contributors. Others with previous open source experience have used Hacktoberfest as a way of setting aside time to revisit projects they haven\u2019t contributed to in a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At its core, Hacktoberfest is about giving back to the projects that help us build countless libraries, services, and frameworks that we use to run our software. That\u2019s why we\u2019re excited to be joining Hacktoberfest<\/a> this year, recognizing anyone who submits a pull request to one of our open source projects<\/a> with a limited-edition T-shirt by the one and only Ashley McNamara. (That right, you can get TWO T-shirts if you submit five PRs and if one is in a Microsoft repo<\/a>). You can get more details on the Microsoft contest here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To help you get the most from Hacktoberfest, below are my tips for how contributors, from experienced maintainers to open source newbies, can make Hacktoberfest meaningful and helpful for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For contributors<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re thinking about participating in Hacktoberfest (I know I am!), start by doing research. The official Hacktoberfest website has typically highlighted suggested projects in the past, but you can contribute to any open source project that\u2019s on GitHub. Find projects either by looking for issues labeled \u201cHacktoberfest\u201d or by perusing projects listed on GitHub\u2019s Explore page<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once you have an idea of what project(s) you\u2019d like to contribute to, look at a project\u2019s \u201ccontributing guidelines.\u201d These guidelines will give you all the information you need to set up your environment, what you need to include in a PR, and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And more importantly, look at the project\u2019s issue tracker. What bugs have people reported, and what features have been requested? Is there anything you\u2019ve noticed that hasn\u2019t been reported or requested yet? If you find something listed in the issue tracker you\u2019d like to work on, let people know that you\u2019d like to start working on it and submit a PR to address the problem. Or submit a PR for something that hasn\u2019t been reported and include a detailed explanation that outlines what the problem is and how your PR solves it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resources:<\/p>\n\n\n\n