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What Is a Contribution?

There is a common misunderstanding that only code and possibly documentation are a "true" contribution to an open source project. This terrible idea has a name that deserves to stay a part of history, "code is king." Let’s have no more of that.

In truth, there are exponentially more ways to contribute than just those two ways. And exponentially more value for the project and the diverse group of contributors making those contributions.

An open source Contribution

Any original, intentional, and substantive object given freely to an open source community, under the licensing of that community. A contribution can come from an individual or a community.

An open source Contributor

Any individual person involved in making Contributions to the community. Communities are interpersonal by their nature. They consist of humans, not organizations. Organizations can send their members, staff, leaders, and so forth out to make contributions to a community as a contributor

Examples of specific contributions (objects):

  • An idea.

  • A design suggestion.

  • Creating or improving a process.

  • Performing any sustained effort.

  • A piece of content, such as a document, release announcement, interview, how-to article, operations page, and so forth.

  • Code, a type of content that instructs machines to do things, regardless of the type of code.

  • Physical materials, such as servers or contributor gifts.

  • Monetary, where possible and welcome. (This is not always an easy or even possible way to contribute to many open source projects.)

  • Being a moderator on a forum.

  • Helping at an event

  • Being the manager for a release.

  • A website design.

  • An automation script.

  • A test suite.

  • Testing and bug reporting.

  • Build a relationship with between two projects.

  • Write a marketing plan.

  • Creating a roadmap.

  • Performing project management (PM) skills for an effort in the community.

  • Doing quantitative or qualitative analysis.

  • Creating a logo.

  • Establishing a project’s Code of Conduct.

  • Helping the project with legal considerations.

  • Building a contributor/maintainer/leader recruiting process.

  • And so forth.

Practically any skill you might learn in a job role, from customer service to product management, can underly a contribution. Any need you can imagine another community having, might be a need of an open source community and can form the basis of a contribution.

It is useful to be mindful of the breadth and depth of types of contributions. As part of the practice of community management, you will have to be aware of the many ways people contribute to a project. Then you can thank them for their contribution, connecting their action from the individual back to the whole and the greater effort.