As the creators, and maintainers of this project, we want to ensure that the project lives and continues to grow. Not blocked by any singular person's computer time. One of the simplest ways of doing this is by encouraging a larger set of shallow contributors. Through this, we hope to mitigate the problems of a project that needs updates but there's no-one who has the power to do so.
If you get a merged Pull Request, regardless of content (typos, code, doc fixes), then you're eligible for push access to this organization. This is checked for on pull request merges and an invite to the organization is sent via GitHub.
Offhand, it's easy to imagine that this would make code quality suffer, but in reality it offers fresh perspectives to the codebase and encourages ownership from people who are depending on the project. If you are building a project that relies on this codebase, then you probably have the skills to improve it and offer valuable feedback.
Everyone comes in with their own perspective on what a project could/should look like, and encouraging discussion can help expose good ideas sooner.
It can be overwhelming to offered the chance to wipe the source code for a project. Don't worry, we don't let you push to master. All code is peer-reviewed, and we have the convention that someone other than the submitter should merge non-trivial pull requests.
As an organization contributor, you can merge other people's pull requests, or other contributors can merge yours. You won't be assigned a pull request, but you're welcome to jump in and take a code review on topics that interest you.
This project is not continuously deployed, there is space for debate after review too. Offering everyone the chance to revert, or make an amending pull request. If it feels right, merge.
It's normal for a first pull request to be a potential fix for a problem, and moving on from there to helping the project's direction can be difficult. We try to help contributors cross that barrier by offering good first step issues. These issues can be fixed without feeling like you're stepping on toes. Ideally, these are non-critical issues that are well defined. They will be purposely avoided by mature contributors to the project, to make space for others.
We aim to keep all project discussion inside GitHub issues. This is to make sure valuable discussion is accessible via search. If you have questions about how to use the library, or how the project is running - GitHub issues are the goto tool for this project.
To quote @alloy from this issue:
Don't ever feel bad for not contributing to open source.
We want contributors to provide ideas, keep the ship shipping and to take some of the load from others. It is non-obligatory; we’re here to get things done in an enjoyable way. 🏆
The fact that you'll have push access will allow you to:
- Avoid having to fork the project if you want to submit other pull requests as you'll be able to create branches directly on the project.
- Help triage issues, merge pull requests.
- Pick up the project if other maintainers move their focus elsewhere.
It's up to you to use those superpowers or not though 😉
If someone submits a pull request that's not perfect, and you are reviewing, it's better to think about the PR's motivation rather than the specific implementation. Having braces on the wrong line should not be a blocker. Though we do want to keep test coverage high, we will work with you to figure that out together.
Both Ash Furrow and Orta Therox have contactable emails on their GitHub profiles, and are happy to talk about any problems.
The original source of this document can be found at https://github.com/moya/contributors.