I applaud what D.O. has done in a very short time to try and fix this with the community. I do however think that this could also backfire. I entirely agree with the comment made on the PR by sylveon https://github.com/digitalocean/hacktoberfest/pull/596#issue...
I'm not a fan of this change because:
- It significantly reduces the pool of repos that you can PR to. I've contributed to repos which haven't explicitly opted in to Hacktoberfest this year and in the past as well. Repos in which I am more comfortable contributing in than some random GitHub search result for the "hacktoberfest" tag. With this change, I am forced to look into those, or convince the maintainers to tag their repos.
- For intermediate or experienced programmers it voids the whole event because the vast majority of OSS projects won't get involved.
- After the spam fest that this year was, people aren't inclined to add the tag to their repos because it paints a target for spam over them.
- Maintainers can now gatekeep your contributions, so even if it's something meaningful the maintainer can deny you a +1 PR for your work. It can be frustrating spending a non-insignificant amount of time to get the t-shirt the right way and then have that time nullified.
- It doesn't address "hello world" spam repos. In fact, it encourages them because of the reduced amount of repos available to contribute to.
> Maintainers can now gatekeep your contributions, so even if it's something meaningful the maintainer can deny you a +1 PR for your work. It can be frustrating spending a non-insignificant amount of time to get the t-shirt the right way and then have that time nullified.
As someone else replied, if you say you are making a significant contribution but the maintainer says you are not, you are not. If you strongly believe the maintainer is wrong and care enough, forks are always there.
Would also like to note that "putting a non-insignificant amount of time" is also not a valid premise for contributing to OSS, what counts is your actual contribution, not the time you spent making it. (e.g. for a given fix, it doesn't matter if it took 1 min or 10 hours, what matters is other things like the quality of it).
> With this change, I am forced to look into those, or convince the maintainers to tag their repos.
That is a very false premise. You can help any open source project! That's the spirit of open source! It'll make things better for you and for others. Now, if you want that free t-shirt, sure there are rules. But no one is "forcing" you not to contribute to OSS. All of the points here seem based on this false premise.
Hacktoberfest is an event intended to help people contribute to Open Source. Based on this, the statement is false. If your only objective is to get a t-shirt, sure then it limits you. But if your objective is contributing to OSS, nothing is stopping you of making meaningful contributions! The only change is getting the t-shirt, but sylveon's comment sounds a very generic statement so wanted to clarify that open source actively welcomes contributions.
I'm not a fan of this change because:
- It significantly reduces the pool of repos that you can PR to. I've contributed to repos which haven't explicitly opted in to Hacktoberfest this year and in the past as well. Repos in which I am more comfortable contributing in than some random GitHub search result for the "hacktoberfest" tag. With this change, I am forced to look into those, or convince the maintainers to tag their repos.
- For intermediate or experienced programmers it voids the whole event because the vast majority of OSS projects won't get involved.
- After the spam fest that this year was, people aren't inclined to add the tag to their repos because it paints a target for spam over them.
- Maintainers can now gatekeep your contributions, so even if it's something meaningful the maintainer can deny you a +1 PR for your work. It can be frustrating spending a non-insignificant amount of time to get the t-shirt the right way and then have that time nullified.
- It doesn't address "hello world" spam repos. In fact, it encourages them because of the reduced amount of repos available to contribute to.