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ty also in developer stories great leaders create more leaders i started on github as a passive lurker casually starring or watching projects that interested me after about a year i started publishing small side projects on to github then after about another year some of those side projects got a bit of traction and i dedicated more time to maintaining them by myself eventually i graduated to the big leagues contributing to projects led by a group of dedicated maintainers these were projects that many people were involved in or depended on and the stakes got higher one of my earliest pull requests prs to such a repository repo was for freecodecamp a nonprofit dedicated to providing accessible coding education to this day they remain one of the most popular and active projects on github since their community was immense and thriving i had the opportunity to attend a few local meetups i was ready to participate more actively i started opening prs for their guides repo where they hosted documentation about various technical topics thankfully the maintainers for this repo were very welcoming i continued to participate as an active member in the community to the point where i contributed to their blog spoke at a local meetup and became a maintainer of one of their repos as i started to focus more on my full time job i began promoting contributors to maintainers for my side projects while becoming the lead maintainer for a larger open source project for a nonprofit i even got awarded and funded for my open source work and invited to speak about my experience at different events from my humble beginnings as a lurker on github to being awarded for my open source work i ve developed a framework called onward outlining what i recommend maintainers should focus on when collaborating on a project with other maintainers regardless of whether they have 3 or 3 000 contributors o is for open you can t be a maintainer of an open source project without embodying the value of being open yourself that means being open to feedback discussions guiding others significant changes and even ownership if you inadvertently become a single point of failure when things get hairy you re not being open enough with your knowledge or power within the project it can also imply you need extra support starting with creating an environment where that s possible below are some examples of how you can embody this value of being open as a maintainer in practice have an accessible space for discussions and feedback document as much of the knowledge in your head as possible recognizing the docs will serve new maintainers in the future develop a governance model list who is involved and in what capacity think about a succession plan when the time comes for you to prioritize other things in life which i believe is genuinely embodying the mentality of open source share finances transparently the major exception to this is when sensitive topics like code of conduct violations need to be handled privately n is for nudges just as when someone transitions from an individual contributor to an engineering manager when you shift from contributor to maintainer your focus also shifts to people solutions instead of technical solutions as a maintainer you re now responsible for leading discussions planning the roadmap onboarding new team members and celebrating wins among many other things however unlike an engineering manager you ve dedicated yourself to an entire community instead of just one team so understanding when it makes sense to delegate becomes even more vital as a maintainer you may prefer the community side of things or not so it s essential to recognize your strengths in yourself and your fellow maintainers either way it s more effective to empower others to contribute instead of contributing yourself all the time going from contributor to maintainer can be a tough transition but shifting your mentality from i can do this myself to let me nudge this person to try this can help nudging means a light push and in open source this can be a valuable way to transform someone from a passive contributor to a dedicated maintainer there will be many opportunities for you as a maintainer to nudge other maintainers in an empowering way which in turn will enable you to learn valuable leadership skills below are some examples of how you can embody this value of positively nudging others as a maintainer in practice recognize what skills fellow maintainers are interested in learning and index for that assign fellow maintainers tasks where you think there s a growth opportunity and explain why nudge a fellow maintainer for feedback gauge the interest of repeat contributors in becoming a maintainer nudge a contributor to go in a different technical direction from a place of positive intent w is for warmth whether your project has 3 or 3 000 contributors how you interact with them defines the project s culture and how likely the community is to thrive warmth isn t just about being positive in interactions and assuming the best intentions but also about creating an environment where contributors of all levels can thrive the easiest way to infer how warm a project is is by seeing how those with the least amount of experience are treated like first time contributors to open source in general it doesn t matter how complicated your project is there should be a path for someone knowledgeable but new to open source to understand how they can provide value below are some examples of how you can embody this value of being warm and welcoming as a maintainer in practice publish community health files code of conduct contributing guide take complaints seriously remove bad actors who are causing a negative experience for others provide resources or links to explain complex logic or jargon avoid language that comes across as demeaning or apathetic use the good first issue label to help new contributors find ways to pitch in identify ways for people to contribute that aren t necessarily code related design documentation project planning etc celebrate wins for all types of contributions whether they re technical or non technical a is for automation who doesn t love a good bot i love to use github actions integrations and other tools that make it easy to catch errors for every new pr created in the repos i maintain for example linters and style checkers help ensure that code meets a project s standards first time contributors appreciate this because they get immediate feedback and can feel more confident knowing all the checks are green as they get their pr ready for review as maintainers we also reap the benefits by feeling more confident approving a pr that has undergone a more thorough automated vetting process you can explore all the different github actions and apps through the marketplace you can also find many use cases for actions through the awesome list below are some examples of what you can configure to your project to make automation work to your advantage as a maintainer deploy previews e g netlify vercel issue organization or creation e g todo top issues stale a warm environment for those new to the project or github overall e g welcome first timers sentiment bot background check code reviews and code analysis e g accesslint code climate hound lgtm performance optimizations e g imgbot lighthouse ci action nudges for contributors e g invite contributors request info you can also take advantage of github s baked in settings or file types to further automate and streamline your repos code and security analysis auto merge pull requests assign pull requests to relevant code owners default community health files scheduled reminders in slack or real time alerts for any activity automated workflows for project boards r is for recognition it s no secret that working as a maintainer can be pretty thankless thankfully pun intended you don t have to be a part of that trend and can instead create clear paths to recognition amongst contributors and the wider maintainer team naturally you can get started with your contributing md guide but often and ironically enough a missing piece in these guides is explicitly calling out the benefits of contributing out of the multitude of projects out there why put in the time and energy for this one whether the recognition is more abstract like increased credibility with a specific technology e g you re contributing to a project that uses one of the popular static site generators in the world or more tangible e g a testimonial after 10 merged prs having clear pathways outlined can lead to an environment where contributing is a source of pride and satisfaction not stress below are some examples of how maintainers can be recognized after x number of contributions the main ways being to provide visibility and credibility visibility providing visibility can be a terrific low lift way of providing much earned recognition to maintainers it also allows folks to instantly become passive project ambassadors and help spread the word here are some ways to provide visibility if your project is part of a github organization add maintainers to the organization so they can publicly display it on their profiles create a custom project badge that maintainers can add to their profile readmes showcase maintainers on the sponsors or funding page amplify maintainers on marketing channels social media blog etc provide maintainers special privileges or badges in relevant community spaces create a project on linkedin polywork etc and add them as contributors highlight maintainers in the release note sometimes your project may get enough recognition that folks are invited to speak about it at conferences or through a podcast remember to shout out to all the folks who supported you and center on we not i for example say this project wouldn t have been possible without the help of all our amazing maintainers and i d like to give a special shout out to maintainer s name who recently helped us resolve this tough regression credibility even non code contributors to a project can boost their credibility as engineers by showcasing the valuable skills they bring to a project some ways you can support those contributors include offer a testimonial about what it was like to work with them on the project for example you can give them a recommendation through linkedin provide sample sentences that contributors can share on their website linkedin under projects for specific roles engineering design technical docs for example contributed to the design system of nonprofit abc s open source website which gets 10k monthly views and led to increased scalability and accessibility compensation providing compensation for open source contributions is much less common still if your project is at a level with funding you can create a bug bounty program or a straightforward process to becoming a paid maintainer if you can t send money you can offer to send maintainers swag such as a shirt or stickers naturally providing swag depends on whether or not you have the financial flexibility to do this but it s a fun conversation starter and can help spread the word plus it just feels cool having custom swag d is for dedication being a maintainer means being in a leadership position while it may be different from what you might imagine traditional leaders have ownership over the burden of being responsible and accountable to others is still there as a maintainer you dedicate your time and energy to other people as much as you do to the code itself but that doesn t mean this project has to be the end all be all for you it s also worth remembering that you never know when external factors such as health or family emergencies might make maintaining a project untenable it s critical to recognize your boundaries and plan for succession when other things in your life take higher priority leadership transitions often lead to a profound loss of historical knowledge so planning ahead even if you have no plans to step down as a maintainer signifies a true sign of dedication to the project you can ensure a more seamless and positive transfer of ownership to continue below are examples of how to embody dedication to a project support and empower fellow maintainers be responsive on communication channels take accountability when things go wrong recognize your boundaries and share when you need time off plan for succession and identify future maintainers final thoughts i hope maintainers can find a starting guide for their projects with this framework as i believe that great maintainers can create future great maintainers how do you know you ve made it as a maintainer my day came when i found a blog post by a developer named isabel costa she talked about her experience contributing to open source for the first time and it was for contributing to one of my projects isabel is now shining bright as a github star and i m grateful to have been part of her journey there i often wonder what would have happened if i had gotten a different response the first few times i decided to contribute to larger projects would i have had the motivation to keep going as a maintainer you hold the power to make or break someone s first time experience in open source as the saying goes with great power comes great responsibility great maintainers create other great maintainers if we can create environments where maintainers feel valued and recognized we can continue making oss s trajectory go onward and upward hey i m frances coronel i worked at slack for four years on their customer acquisition team and am currently engineer number three at the startup byteboard i live in inglewood with my partner nolan and my corgis luna and sueño in my free time i like to train my dogs do house renovations blog and contribute to open source projects more stories working across borders to achieve more leonid stolyarov kpmg what is engineering for software dave farley continuous delivery ltd shift security left in one day justin watts telus about the readme project coding is usually seen as a solitary activity but it s actually the world s largest community effort led by open source maintainers contributors and teams these unsung heroes put in long hours to build software fix issues field questions and manage communities the readme project is part of github s ongoing effort to amplify the voices of the developer community it s an evolving space to engage with the community and explore the stories challenges technology and culture that surround the world of open source follow us nominate a developer nominate inspiring developers and projects you think we should feature in the readme project support the community recognize developers working behind the scenes and help open source projects get the resources they need sign up for newsletter every month we ll share new articles from the readme project episodes of the readme podcast 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