Don't Contribute to Open Source  ## Metadata - Author: [[Theo - t3․gg]] - Full Title: Don't Contribute to Open Source - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #opensource - #developeradvocacy - #contributionstrategy Author: ThePrimeagen (YouTube creator) Source: YouTube video transcript, "Don't Contribute to Open Source" Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nY_cy8zcO4 date created: 2025-07-23 09:20 --- # Title: Don’t Contribute to Open Source — A Critical Perspective on Developer Contribution Goals ## Table of Contents:  - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#-notes) - [📖 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical validity](#-logical-validity) - [🔍 DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### References: - ThePrimeagen. "Don't Contribute to Open Source." YouTube, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nY_cy8zcO4 ## 📝 Summary: This video transcript presents a provocative take: most developers, especially beginners, should *not* set open source contribution as an initial goal. The creator argues that open source is about solving real problems and contributing meaningfully to projects you use, not a checklist for job hunting or quick wins. The prevalent push for quantity contributions, incentivized by events like October Fest, has led to low-quality pull requests that burden maintainers. The recommendation is to build understanding and skill first, then contribute thoughtfully—starting with reporting issues or fixing problems in projects one genuinely uses. ## 📖 Main Content: The creator opens by acknowledging the controversial nature of the claim, explaining it was triggered by a Reddit post where a beginner sought projects without learning TypeScript. The author stresses that the idea of “just contributing to open source to get a job” is misplaced and harmful. Open source’s true value is in addressing problems encountered, improving projects you rely on, and becoming part of a community. The video discusses how superficial contribution goals have been encouraged by events like October Fest, where participants seek to make a minimum number of PRs for rewards like t-shirts. This has flooded projects with trivial or low-quality PRs, frustrating maintainers and contributors alike. The creator emphasizes that good contributions come from understanding the project deeply, having real issues to solve, and progressing from using and learning the software to meaningful fixes or reports. Merely aiming to "make a contribution" without this foundation wastes time and can damage reputations. He advocates for starting by building projects and using software actively to recognize problems, then filing detailed issues or well-thought-out fixes. Contribution should be a result of genuine engagement, not a career shortcut or checkbox. ## 🗒️ Notes - **Initial Thesis:** - Many developers shouldn’t set open source contributions as a primary goal. - This advice applies especially to beginners. - **Motivation for the Video:** - Triggered by a Reddit post where a beginner sought “easy” projects excluding TypeScript. - Responses to that post revealed misconceptions about open source contribution. - **Purpose of Open Source:** - To share improvements and solve real problems in projects you rely on. - Not primarily a place for job hunting or free mentorship. - **Hiring and Open Source:** - Contributions can impress employers, but only if they show problem-solving and community involvement. - Quality matters more than quantity. - **Alternative Contributions:** - Writing detailed bug reports with reproduction steps is valuable. - Good articulation of problems shows engagement. - **Toxicity of Misused Contribution Goals:** - Treating open source as a “magic ticket” to jobs leads to poor-quality PRs. - Maintainers are overwhelmed by spammy or trivial pull requests, especially from incentive events. - **October Fest Impact:** - Events encouraging arbitrary numbers of PRs have caused a surge in low-value contributions. - This strains maintainers and pollutes project repositories. - **Path to Good Contributions:** - Start by *using* software and identifying real issues. - Build personal projects to deepen understanding. - Approach contributions with knowledge and clear problems to solve. - **Goal Setting Advice:** - Goals should be achievable and based on things you understand. - Avoid vague goals like “contribute to open source” or “learn JavaScript” without specifics. - **Final Encouragement:** - Focus on improving coding by building real projects. - Let contribution be a natural outcome of this growth. ## 📖 References: - ThePrimeagen. "Don't Contribute to Open Source." YouTube, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nY_cy8zcO4 ## 🗣️ Paraphrase:  1. Original: "If you're struggling to find which projects to contribute to, you probably shouldn't be contributing yet. The best project to contribute to is one that you use, where you have a problem you understand and want to fix." Paraphrase: If you’re unsure about where to contribute, it’s a sign you might need more experience first. The ideal open source project to engage with is one that you actively use and have a genuine issue with that you feel capable of addressing. 2. Original: "Open source contributions aren’t valuable simply because they exist; they’re valuable because they demonstrate you’ve encountered real software problems, solved them, and become part of the community." Paraphrase: Contributions gain worth not just by their presence, but by showing that you’ve faced authentic challenges with software, fixed those problems, and integrated yourself within the project’s community. ## 📰 Newsletter: 🔥 **This Week in WordPress & Open Source: Why Not Everyone Should Contribute to OSS (At First)** 🔥 Hey folks! 🚀 Ever feel pressured to make your first open source contribution, but unsure where to start? ThePrimeagen flips the script in his latest video, arguing that most developers *shouldn’t* rush into OSS contributions as a goal. Instead, he suggests building real projects, using tools deeply, and solving authentic problems before diving in. Why? Because open source isn’t a magic job ticket or mentorship program — it’s a community effort focused on improving what we all rely on. Quality beats quantity, and understanding beats “just contributing.” If you’re learning WordPress development, take this wisdom: start with your own projects and use the software you want to improve. Then, open source contributions become meaningful and impactful. Catch the full discussion here: [Don’t Contribute to Open Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nY_cy8zcO4) Plus: Stay tuned for updates on new WordPress plugins, community highlights, and tips for growing your dev skills sustainably. 🎉 ## ✅ Action Items: - Reframe messaging in onboarding and educational materials to emphasize understanding software and solving real problems before contributing. - Encourage learners to build personal projects as foundations before OSS contribution. - Develop workshops focused on goal-setting strategies that prioritize achievable, meaningful milestones over vague “contribute to OSS” aims. - Engage with the WordPress community to share this perspective, helping reduce toxic contribution pressure on new developers. - Incorporate these insights into advocacy talks and documentation to foster healthier contribution cultures. - Align outreach with your OSPO aspirations by advocating for contributor readiness assessments and mentoring structures that respect maintainer time. - Promote transparency about contribution value to manage newcomer expectations realistically, advancing inclusivity by lowering stress and burnout risks. ## 🧪 Hy - Summary: You heard me right. I don't think you should contribute to open source. Unless... KEYWORDS: GITHUB OPEN SOURCE CODING DEVELOPING PROGRAMMING LEARNING TO CODE FIRST CONTRIBUTION PULL REQUEST Check out my Twitch, Twitter, Discord more at https://t3.gg S/O Ph4se0n3 for the awesome edit 🙏 - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nY_cy8zcO4 open source is great and you probably shouldn't contribute to it I know spicy take y'all are going to have some feelings about this one but this isn't a clickbait video I do actually believe that most developers probably shouldn't be contributing to open source or at the very least setting open source contributions as a goal we're going to take a bit of a weird Journey but I think it will highlight why I feel so strongly about this and also help developers both new and seasoned in bettering themselves well why am I talking about this as per usual I saw a tweet this tweet frustrated me not because of the Tweet itself the Tweet was fine but the responses that I was seeing to it Flavia found a post on the react subreddit from a beginner asking for help finding repos with good issues for a first-time contributor they specifically said they didn't want repos that use typescript because they didn't want to learn typescript all of the replies were learn typescript people were upset that this is the typescript cabal pushing so hard to convince everyone to use their language and looking down on those who don't and on it I accidentally fed into this a bit cuz I didn't realize that's what people were misreading I called out the issue I saw here which was about beginners desperately trying to sneak in open source contributions but since I use the word typescript here specifically I said if they still see typescript as a hurdle they'll be a massive burden to whatever project they contribute to that's a fact I'm not going to debate that let me know in the comments that I'm wrong because that's not what this is actually about and I think if I show you the real Reddit post you'll understand just what I mean here here's the original post everyone is replying to trying to find some good project without typescript to contribute can someone help me in finding a good open source project in react without typescript which contains good first issues for a beginner to start as I need to start doing open source but can't find the suitable project do y'all see the problem here as I need to start doing open source nobody needs to start doing open source this is why I am so very specifically frustrated and you can even see their replies down here here it is when you do open source you're debugging skills improve in everything like networking which can be good for referrals attract interviewee when they see you made contribution and open source and scope of learning is high this sounds like either he chat GPT why should I do open source or just read a list of the things you should do to get your first tech job this sucks like genuinely because open source was never about helping somebody get started with Dev open source is about sharing contributions to things you use so others can use them and benefit from them as well and if you don't know which projects you should be contributing to it's because the carts being put before the horse here obviously contributing to open source does help with getting jobs as a hiring manager if I can look at your GitHub and see a lot of contributions read through the code and see that you know what you're doing that builds a level of trust that I couldn't have otherwise gotten without having worked with you in the past but I feel like the cart's getting put before the horse here because the open source contributions aren't valuable because they exist they're valuable because they show that you've run into real problems with software not only did you have those problems you fixed them and have been part of the community in that way contributing code also isn't the only way to make a splash via GitHub if you're showing up cutting issues that describe problems in detail especially if you bring reproduction steps with it that's huge being able to articulate problems well and show that you are in the trenches you are out here writing code is way more valuable than convincing some repo to accidentally merge one of your weird poll requests and this is why I'm so frustrated because we're holding the idea of Open Source contributions as this Holy Grail that gets you a job but that's not how it works if you're struggling to figure out which projects to contribute to you shouldn't be contributing yet the best project to contribute to is the one that you use you have a problem with and you've looked through the source code and think you might be able to solve it and even then you should be starting with an issue not with a bunch of code that you're hoping somebody will take the time to Mentor you through fixing open source is not a place to go for free mentorship open source is not a place to go to get a free job open source is an ecosystem of people working really hard to keep the web and all of software development alive it is not her job to Mentor you at the same time I'm not saying you can't get good mentorship in open source and that there aren't people in open source who will do mentorship when people start contrib ruting I've even done this with the contributors both to create T3 app and upload thing cre3 app has over I think 300 contributors now half of which are firsttime open source contributors that's huge but that's because they used the project they had problems with it or they saw issues they knew how to solve but it started with using the project not with wanting open source contributions and if your goal is just contributing to open source you've entirely lost the plot and that's what I saw when I saw this Reddit post it was somebody who didn't want to learn they didn't want to improve their skills they didn't want to do the hard thing they wanted to use open source as a hack to get a job and that is incredibly toxic and will actually destroy open source if we're not careful about how we recommend these things I called this out on Twitter because I think it's incredibly toxic to push new developers to open source as though they'll get free mentorship and jobs that's not how open source works most open source developers and maintainers are already struggling to keep their projects afloat under the weight of all the issues and PRS and random nonsense that they're getting especially now that we're seeing a surge of AI gener ated poll requests and nonsense if you're a new developer showing up on an empty GitHub account making a bunch of PRS with code that we'll be honest isn't great yet cuz you're still new it's going to do nothing but frustrate the maintainers and frustrate yourself as well now that you're wasting all of this time what if you just cut issues on the things you use this is what I'm trying to push this whole time so how do we get here why are there so many devs that think open source contributions are this magic trick in order to get a job well I think there's one event that led to a lot of these problems an event hosted by digital ocean every year named oob Fest hob Fest started all the way back in 2013 as a collaboration between digital ocean and GitHub this is actually before GitHub was owned by Microsoft so the Azure digital ocean competition wasn't really something they worried about the inaugural hotober fist was a modest Affair participants were challenged to make at least four poll requests to open source repos on GitHub during the month of October in return they would receive a limited edition hober Fest t-shirt as a token of appreciation for their contributions the event attracted a few hundred participants in its first year the problem with this wasn't that they encouraged open source or that they gave out free t-shirts actually pretty cool it was a small thing for open source maintainers to encourage them to contribute to more different projects and get out decent few PRS in a given month cool idea I appreciate the sentiment I see what they were trying to do here but it very quickly exploded and caused many more problems than it solved in 2020 open source maintainers were getting tired of the lowquality contributions that tended to come through the October Fest goals when you set a goal as arbitrary is get four pole requests merged the result isn't people being very careful meticulous with the four PRS they cut the result is people spend repos with dozens of PRS making single line fixes or changes or just having their own opinions about grammar in hopes somebody will merge it so they can hit that threshold and be a member of hober Fest I really like how it's put in this article by Dominic in reality hober Fest is a corporate sponsored distributed denial of service attack against the open source maintainer community so far today on a single repository myself and fellow maintainers have closed 11 spam poll requests each of these generates notifications often email to the 485 Watchers of the Repository and each of them requires maintainer time to visit the poll request evaluate it spaming close it tag it a Spam lock the thread to prevent further comments and then report the spammer to GitHub in the hopes of stopping their time wasting Rampage the rate of spam PO requests is 4 per hour and it's not even October yet yeah another article let's see it somebody even made a Twitter account called toober Fest where they document the crap PRS people are filing during hober Fest it's hilarious just how bad things were in the title please accept my request I will get a free t-shirt please request God this was so bad it was so bad I don't think we appreciate just how bad this got and to me it highlights the size of this problem when you have a bunch of people who don't understand open source and you tell them that it's this magic thing that gets them something be it a t-shirt or a job you end up with nonsense to be very very clear I'm not saying you shouldn't contribute to open source if you have a problem with something that happens to be open source or you see an opportunity in a project you're familiar with to make a meaningful contribution I think you should start with issues but in order to start with an issue you have to use the thing enough to have an issue with it in order to use the thing to have issues you should be building stuff this is where my constant rant comes back the best way to get better at coding is to code more build stuff solve problems that you understand let's say you're really into Minecraft maybe make a web app to keep track of the different things you're mining or how close you are to specific goals or you're really into sports make a website for tracking your favorite sports team scores at different events there's a lot of things you can do that might not be perfect but solve a problem you understand well enough to know if your solution's working or not and once you start doing that you'll almost certainly use open source projects and once you start doing that you'll certainly start to run into problems good open source contributions don't come from the goal of contributing to open source they come from an understanding of what the project does that you're contributing to and this is what I mean when I say the cart before the horse the horse is having a problem with some open source software the cart is the fix that you created to that problem or even just the issue you cut about it but if you put the cart in front which is the goal of Open Source contributions you're not going to get anywhere you're just going to sit there refusing to learn typescript for some reason and not progressing and I see this a lot this is why I made my goal setting video because developers set really bad goals especially new developers goals like make an open source contribution or learn JavaScript kind of suck because you don't understand either of those things well enough to know when you've achieved it goals come from things you understand not things you don't start with something you understand be it a video game you play a random app you want to recreate something that you know so you know when it is or isn't working and work backwards from there but if you're starting with something you don't understand as your goal you're never going to get there and I've seen so many devs spiraling in circles around this that's all I think I have to say here appreciate you all a ton check out my video about goal setting if you haven't already I'll see you in the next one peace nerds, Don't Contribute to Open Source, Theo - t3․gg, 01k0vp3wsqb3b3ytycgvkdc9dg.