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I'd imagine there's almost always a door open for talented and competent people looking to make meaningful contributions and have substantive impact.

simonw 3y ago
I love it when people contribute to my projects by opening an issue, discussing their idea, then contributing a clean PR with bundled documentation and tests. Actively soliciting contributions isn't necessarily the way to get that. Look at what happens with Hacktoberfest: there are hundreds of thousands of newer developers out there who want to earn their stripes by contributing to an open source project. The amount of work this creates for the projects themselves is enormous.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  Sure but the pipeline of increasing responsibility needs to be open to new recruits for the long-term viability of a project. We all used to be dumb teenagers as well.
- nox101 3y ago
  > then contributing a clean PR with bundled documentation and tests. I've never seen this. No tests, un-clean PR. Describing them how to fix it would take more time than re-doing the PR myself. Of course maybe if I thought they were going to contribute a bunch more PRs it would be worth spending time training them but I've never had that kind of contributor.
  - simonw 3y ago
    I had one of these recently! https://github.com/simonw/shot-scraper/pull/133/files https://github.com/simonw/shot-scraper/pull/133/files They're /incredibly/ rare though.
dolmen 3y ago
This is a wrong assumption. Opening the code doesn't necessarily mean that external contributions are expected. Reports of issues might be welcome, code contributions less. I've seen too many popular projects polluted by low quality contributions. When they get merged without care, the project's quality degrades. When they accumulate, the load on the maintainers shoulders becomes heavy.
- aendruk 3y ago
  While you’re not wrong this is a confusing interpretation of the parent. almost always → necessarily talented, competent, meaningful → low quality

simonw 3y ago

I love it when people contribute to my projects by opening an issue, discussing their idea, then contributing a clean PR with bundled documentation and tests. Actively soliciting contributions isn't necessarily the way to get that. Look at what happens with Hacktoberfest: there are hundreds of thousands of newer developers out there who want to earn their stripes by contributing to an open source project. The amount of work this creates for the projects themselves is enormous.

kristopolous 3y ago
Sure but the pipeline of increasing responsibility needs to be open to new recruits for the long-term viability of a project. We all used to be dumb teenagers as well.
nox101 3y ago
> then contributing a clean PR with bundled documentation and tests. I've never seen this. No tests, un-clean PR. Describing them how to fix it would take more time than re-doing the PR myself. Of course maybe if I thought they were going to contribute a bunch more PRs it would be worth spending time training them but I've never had that kind of contributor.
- simonw 3y ago
  I had one of these recently! https://github.com/simonw/shot-scraper/pull/133/files https://github.com/simonw/shot-scraper/pull/133/files They're /incredibly/ rare though.

dolmen 3y ago

This is a wrong assumption. Opening the code doesn't necessarily mean that external contributions are expected. Reports of issues might be welcome, code contributions less. I've seen too many popular projects polluted by low quality contributions. When they get merged without care, the project's quality degrades. When they accumulate, the load on the maintainers shoulders becomes heavy.

aendruk 3y ago
While you’re not wrong this is a confusing interpretation of the parent. almost always → necessarily talented, competent, meaningful → low quality