Contributor Growth

A framework to help open source projects develop workflows, processes, and habits that incentivize users to become long-term, active, and engaged members of your community.

The goal of this framework is to help open source projects develop workflows, processes, and habits that incentivize users to become long-term, active, and engaged members of your community.

The first version of this document summarizes the experience different project maintainers have gathered over the past years (chronologically ordered by interview):

NOTE: We want this to be a living document where projects keep updating and adding new ideas as their experience grows. If you’ve learned something other projects can benefit from, please submit a PR with your advice.

This framework has five independent sections, so feel free to jump into whichever section interests you most.

  1. Motivating users to contribute
  2. A successful PR workflow
  3. Keeping contributors engaged after their first contribution
  4. Incentivizing contributors to move up the ladder
  5. Incentivizing non-code contributions
  6. Long-term contributors