Hacktoberfest 2022: Complete your mission for open source

DigitalOcean is excited to announce that Hacktoberfest, our month-long celebration of the open-source community, is underway! Each year, DigitalOcean encourages individuals to participate in open source projects throughout the month of October, giving back to projects that are often maintained by passionate and talented people but lack significant budgets and resources. As always, we welcome all members of our global community to participate!

New in 2022: Low or no code contributions

You don’t have to be able to write code to participate in Hacktoberfest. Professionals from all backgrounds are integral to the advancement of open source projects, and non-technical skills can be used in a variety of ways. This year, we’re making it easier to contribute in areas that require some technical experience or none at all.

Some of the ways non-technical individuals can contribute to open source projects are:

• Writing technical documentation or translating or copy editing
• Offering graphic design or video editing services
• User experience testing
• Wiring blog posts on behalf of a projects
• Sharing projects on social media

Rules to reduce spam

In 2020, we discovered that the popularity of Hacktoberfest over the years and the excitement of earning a limited-edition Hacktoberfest t-shirt resulted in low-quality pull/merge requests (PR/MRs) as participants chased the t-shirt without thinking about their actions. These actions resulted in more work for maintainers and a poorer experience for the open source community. In response, we immediately tightened our rules for submissions during the 2020 event and were more consistent with enforcement, successfully ensuring higher-quality PR/MRs and reducing the number of spam complaints. We kept those same rules in 2021 and will be doing the same this year, continually refining them based on feedback from the community to ensure Hacktoberfest is a positive experience.

As part of our continued dedication to providing a high-quality, helpful experience that brings the open source community together, we have the following rules for this year:

• Maintainers must opt-in to Hacktoberfest by adding the ‘hacktoberfest’ topic to their participating repository/project in GitHub or GitLab or by applying the ‘hacktoberfest-accepted’ label to individual PR/MRs.
• Spammy PR/MRs will be labeled. If the PR/MR has any label that contains the word ‘spam’, then it will be treated as spam and will not be counted for Hacktoberfest. Users that have two or more spam PR/MRs will be permanently disqualified.
• PR/MRs only count once accepted by a maintainer. Maintainers of opted-in projects can accept PR/MRs from contributors by merging them, giving them an overall approving review, or labeling them as ‘hacktoberfest-accepted’.
• We’ve instituted a reporting system for bad repositories. The Hacktoberfest community can let us know about repositories designed to cheat Hacktoberfest.
• We’ve reduced the emphasis on the t-shirt and winning a prize. Instead, we’re focused on how to bring communities together to improve open source for all in a positive way.

How to participate

Hacktoberfest is open to anyone who wants to participate, whether you’ve joined us for all nine years or you’re new to contributing to open source. To complete Hacktoberfest, you must contribute four accepted pull requests or merge requests to opted-in repos on GitHub or GitLab, but we encourage participation of all levels–you can also participate by completing a single PR/MR, making a donation to your favorite open-source project, or organizing or attending a virtual event. Participants (maintainers and contributors) who complete Hacktoberfest can choose one of two prizes: a tree planted in their name or the Hacktoberfest 2022 t-shirt, while supplies last. See this page for complete rules.

Thanks to our sponsors

Hacktoberfest couldn’t happen without the support and participation of the open source community, especially our sponsoring partners. This year we are joined by returning partner Appwrite and are welcoming Docker, Novu, RapidAPI and Devtron. Our partners have some great Hacktoberfest activities you can participate in. Come meet them and learn more! Join our Hacktoberfest livestream events.

We can’t wait to see all the ways you choose to participate this year!

Happy hacking!

Phoebe Quincy, Senior Community Relations Manager