Hacktoberfest 2020 is a wrap! It’s been so fun reading all of your reflections on participating as a contributor or project maintainer here on DEV and seeing your contributions to Forem’s own repository. If you couldn’t tell from our weekly gratitude streams and my contributor roundup posts, we are beyond grateful for your help improving the Forem codebase 🌱
Why Hacktoberfest?
If you’ve never contributed to open source or you're an OSS veteran who’s never participated in Hacktoberfest, you might be wondering why DEV chooses to co-sponsor this annual celebration in the first place.
As the Open Source Community Manager here at Forem, I know how open source can very quickly feel like a way of life and not in need of any wider promotion. But it’s important for all of us to remember that the seemingly ubiquitous nature of open source software is extremely recent and in an ever-changing world, somewhat tenuous.
To continue the Hacktoberfest tradition of celebrating open source each October and offering prizes and community recognition in exchange is actually a really great way of keeping the drumbeat going. Open source needs to be accessible and exciting to the next generation of eager contributors who might one day become experts and project maintainers themselves.
Hacktoberfest is also a tremendous chance for maintainers to revisit their documentation and make sure it makes no assumptions about the readers. In a sense, Hacktoberfest is all about making the barrier-to-entry to starting out with open source the appropriate height while connecting people all over the world. It’s all about accessibility.
Hacktoberfest and the DEV Community
To close out Hacktoberfest 2020, I wanted to highlight a few particularly awesome posts from the DEV community...
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What I love about the Open Source Community
Michelle Duke ・ Oct 7 '20
Thanks to @mcastellin, @dailydevtips1, @dawntraoz, @wagslane, @m0nica, @braydentw, @mishmanners, and ALL of you for sharing your Hacktoberfest tips, resources, and stories with us!
Long live open source!
As we head towards the end of the year on the Western calendar (with the Lunar New Year not all that far off!), I hope all Hacktoberfest participants see Hacktoberfest as a major highlight for their personal growth in 2020. At its core, open source is all about bettering the community with collective work and an exchange of ideas. That is certainly something to celebrate in 2020!
Happy Hacktoberfest, DEV Community!
Top comments (10)
Hacktoberfest was an amazing way to start contributing in new issues and discover new tech stack 😍 Now we need to follow our journey in open source!! Thanks a lot for the organization and motivation 💜
I'm curious about what is the next event 🦸😏
I think it will be "Class of 2021" 🎯
Even with all of the chaos at the start of the month it is still such an amazing success. I got my first PR approved through hacktoberfest 2 years ago and now have completed 3 years. It has definitely lowered the barrier to entry for me and I contribute with new issues and PR's all throughout the year.
Hats off to the Hacktoberfest team to making such quick changes to the process and doing their best to maintain a positive impact on the community.
Great job to contributors and maintainers alike!
Hacktoberfest was an amazing experience, loved to contribute and will try and do at least one contribution each month to stay active and make news friends!
🤟
How will we be able to acquire the badge for those who completed hacktoberfest
And i have chosen to plant a tree instead of taking the T-shirt.
Really a great experience for me 🎉
Really a great experience for me ,it was just starting my career in open source community and enjoyed it too
I did complete all of my PRs. But I haven't received a badge yet.