Post

Tyler Williams
@coolsoftware.dev

Open source is more fun with friends. If you don't have the time or energy to contribute yourself, I have a way for you to live vicariously: sponsor me on GitHub and I'll send you updates about what I'm working on. I'll also take feedback on what *you* think I should work on.

Tyler Williams
@coolsoftware.dev

I do about 5-10 hours per week of open source work on my own time. These days, I'm doing work in the MobX ecosystem, trying to prepare for us React Compiler compatibility. But when I want a break from that, I dig through React Native community repos and pitch in wherever I can.

Alyssa DiCarlo
@techlyss.bsky.social

How did you get into contributing to open source projects? I’m sure I speak for a lot of people when I say it’s hard to figure out where to contribute. And even when an opportunity seems promising, it’s tough to know if my contribution is even needed or part of the vision of the project.

Tyler Williams
@coolsoftware.dev

The short answer is: I struggled with that for a long time, I still do, and I got lucky a few years ago when @jamon.dev presented me with an opportunity to take a leadership role in MobX-State-Tree, which helped me build up some intuition and resilience.

Kræn Hansen 🇩🇰
@kraenhansen.dk

I've had good experience looking up the maintainer(s) on other platforms (primarily Twitter / 𝕏) and asking those more soft questions. A PR to clear up some mistake / typo in the docs is also often very appreciated and shows you're interested and has actually read the friendly manual 😊 Good luck!

Frank Calise
@frankcalise.dev

First you can peruse the issue boards. Just start answering common questions that you see recurring in a project you're interested in. Helping facilitate the movement or categorizing of issues for maintainers is super helpful.