I miss Hacktoberfest

Published on , 569 words, 3 minutes to read

At least the ones before 2020.

I like contributing to open-source software, so much so that I do it mostly in my free time. Having a month that was somewhat dedicated to motivating more people into contributing, with the bonus of getting a shirt with a cool motive on it, was pretty rad.

I even went ahead and told people about Hacktoberfest, who had projects struggling with low contributions, to market themselves with low-barrier documentation contributions and similar that would maybe spark more regular contributors, especially because the community around said projects wasn't small, just the motivation was low. Throwing a shirt in the mix surely got some people to do that one PR they dreaded before.

Now it's October again, and I'm here, and I feel like making OSS contributions to some projects. Hacktoberfest is still going strong, but it isn't like before anymore. And it's not about the fact that we don't receive a shirt anymore. While it's a bit weird, a virtual pinboard can still be a motivating factor, I do have mine, for example.

For the people that don't know, Hacktoberfest initially started out being able to contribute towards any GitHub repository. This, however, changed in 2020, after a programming YouTuber made a video titled "How to Earn Free T-Shirt, Swag & Goodies Online", basically detailing how to make low-quality PRs to fill up the count of required pull requests quickly.

The year was bad enough to taint Hacktoberfest for many open-source maintainers due to the massive spam they received.

Just 3 days after Hacktoberfest 2020 started it was made opt-in for projects. This new system helped combat the massive spam waves relatively quickly with projects now needing the hacktoberfest topic to have PRs count towards a user's total.

My main problem now is that I can't contribute to the projects I want to to make my contributions count.

This kind of goes against the spirit of the whole thing since the main factor should be the contributions themselves, not the reward. But why would I partake in Hacktoberfest if I can't contribute to the projects that I'm actively using to get my count worth for the 4 PRs?

Couldn't you ask a maintainer to add the tag when you contribute? Of course you can, but that'd be awkward. Instead of passively gaining your PR count with contributions, it makes you look like you contribute for the sake of getting the shirt/badges/whatever.

In hindsight, I think the spam stuff was inevitable. If it wasn't for that one YouTuber making that video, someone would have written a blog post or found another loophole around the whole thing to break it, possibly even worse.

The current Hacktoberfest doesn't feel natural anymore. Of course, someone can be a good Samaritan and contribute to the projects in need with the Hacktoberfest label, but would you do that if you have no contact point? People tend to (and should) contribute to the projects they use, not contribute randomly to boost their profiles and CVs to bolster how good of a dev they are.

Maybe we need to look past Hacktoberfest and let it go. I'll probably make my contributions this month and then write a blog post at the end of the month to accommodate my achievements...

That sounds like a plan!

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