6mo ago

How do i ask for contributors to my open source projects?

id like to ask if there is some guideline/advice for asking for open source contributions.

initially i thought i could just have open source code, documentation and communicate about it, but that doesnt seem to work for gaining contributors.

maybe there is something else im overlooking?

contributors would be using their own valuable time and effort so it could just be that my projects are not interesting enough. it might be worth concluding that i should proceed on this solo.

27 comments

I think most open-source contributions come from a tiny fraction of users who initially get involved because they want to improve the project or fix a bug for their own usage
- Exactly, in other words, you get people involved by making your tools good and advertising them to increase usage.
  Write good documentation, make it user-friendly, create beautiful landing pages for the repository (i.e. readme), create a marketing/project website, be responsive in discussion forums, etc etc
  
  https://github.com/positive-intentions/chat https://github.com/positive-intentions/dim
  i dont think my documentation is as clear as it could be, but i dont think its unclear: https://positive-intentions.com/blog/dim-functional-webcomponents
  i think i have put efforts towards a good landing page, readme, documentation etc. id appriciate if you critique those.
- Make something good and they will come.
  
  thanks. i think then i should continue as im going and see where i end up.
- thanks. maybe i havent reached the point at which people are using my projects enough for them to to improve a part of it.
it would be a good start to include a link to a git repo in your posts, when you share your blog posts.
if your code is hosted somewhere where you can create issues and tag them, create issues and tag them as "contribution welcome" or "good first issue".
github is probably the best plattform to get contributions, simply because it's the biggest and so many people already have an account there.
but complex reworks or new features are probably nothing a random contributor will provide, but you or close collaborators.
- thanks for the tips.
  i typically mention the git repo's involved.
  i'll give it a go with something like contribution welcome. my projects are on github and i think i have something setup for issues tracking.
  i suspect my projects might be a bit complicated and so unappealing to a random contributor.
  
  i mean: provide a link to the repo in your posts body, do not just link to your blog ;)
Just some general advice:
get regular users. Contributors are going to be a subset of users as another commentor mentioned.
make sure to have a CONTRIBUTING.md and that it is clear/ easy to follow. Some projects will link to a separate wiki from the .md which is fine. But make sure your "first time contributor" instructions are easy to follow to set up whatever dev environment needed. The less clear the documentation then the more motivated the contributors will need to be.
if you haven't already, make issues with feature requests that you are wanting to add. Include enough details that someone other than you will understand your requirements.
consider a label you use to signify "great issue for a first time contribution". These should be relatively simple fixes or simple features but give time for someone else to try them instead of completing it right away. Make sure to reference this label in your contribution documentation as a great starting point. If you're able to get someone to do a simple fix then they will have set up the dev environment and may do other future issues.
advertise that you're looking for contributors. Point out your docs, first time contributor label, and any specific features you want/need help with.
- thanks! i'll make time to create those.
I recommend reading this insightful, sometimes hilarious, sometimes frightening, but almost always educational collection of texts about open source development:
https://un.curl.dev/
- i took a brief look. this looks like a really good read! thanks for pointing me to it!
Be sure also the issues you have in your project have the suitable labels to help future contributors to pick easily some of them, i.e. labels like “help wanted” or “good first issue”.
You can also refer to best practices listed and explained for example in Advent of Open Source so as to have a nice and user-friendly repo: https://adventofopensource.com/
- thanks for the tip. youre right i think i need to do more housekeeping there. i dont give it much attention, because as a solo project, id mostly just be doing it to myself with admin stuff.
  i previsously made an attempt for things like issues, but it doesnt seem to have made any different and is just an additional overhead that im ignoring: https://github.com/positive-intentions/chat/issues
  i used to pay more attention to it, but its only my time being wasted if nobody else is interested (thats fine... but it results in the amount of attention i give it. and i have a lot of things to do already when i dont have enough time for it)
Can you share which software you are talking about?
- its further described by this previous post: https://programming.dev/post/23381812 ... to put it simply, its a javascript UI framework.
  i have another project https://github.com/positive-intentions/chat ... but that project is very complicated. too complicated for me to easily explain how it works.
  
  its a javascript UI framework
  a very satisfied field, with a lot of established mainstream options

27 comments