

Am I doing Open Source wrong? - useyourloaf

TL;DR: A lot of people contact me saying they&#x27;d like to help out with my Open Source project, but don&#x27;t actually &lt;i&gt;do&lt;&#x2F;i&gt; anything. Can I fix this?
When employers get an applicant who claims they worked on an Open Source project, does the employer actually verify this activity?<p>I have a small, niche Open Source project. Unnamed to protect the guilty :) It doesn&#x27;t have a lot of followers but there is international interest.<p>My dilemma is I have received requests to become a &quot;member&quot; and &quot;help out&quot; since the beginning. But when I email back, saying &quot;great! here are some bugs or areas you might help out with!&quot;, 99% of the time I get no further response. &lt;p&gt;For Open Source, my understanding has always been to work on a project, you must:<p>1. Dig in yourself, 
2. Find something to fix or create, 
3. Create a patch or set of files,
4. Submit it to the project moderators for approval,
5. Be invited to &quot;join&quot; based on your success in steps 1-4.<p>Have the &quot;rules&quot; changed? I explain to the requestors that I won&#x27;t give &quot;member&quot; access right away: they have to write some code or make some other contribution, submit it for approval, and I&#x27;ll consider letting them join. After that ... nothing.<p>Can I fix this? Am I doing this wrong? Is this exactly what I can expect?<p>I see other Open Source projects explicitly spell out the above join process. Do other projects have a better application&#x2F;contribution ratio?<p>Related question: I&#x27;ve seen here on Hacker News that employers suggest candidates include pointers to Open Source projects they&#x27;ve done. Do employers actually _look_ at whether the candidate has actually _done_ anything?<p>I look at the profile of the people who contact me and most of the time they&#x27;ve done nothing even if 
they are a member of an Open Source project.
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tjr
I've been a project maintainer for GNU for years. Most of the people who wrote
to me expressing interest in helping never actually did anything.

But on the other hand, quite a few people just submitted helpful patches out
of the blue and then disappeared, never to be heard from again.

