Introduction to Contributor Experience

What is contributor experience?

Behind every successful open source project is a strong contributor community. Yes, software must provide solutions. Ideally, should be a useful piece in a larger solution to a larger problem, a part of a tool-chain. However, it’s the people, the community, the culture of the community that determine the longevity of an open source project. And when we talk about the culture of any given open source community, what we really mean is the sum of:

• values, hopefully all documented as policies and guidelines,
• technical infrastructure
• social infrastructure

which serve as ‘glue’ in onboarding and supporting contributors to an open source community.

In practice, for an OSS project to have a good culture means designing and providing positive contributor experience. The emerging field of open source contributor experience examines how policies, processes, and tools affect volunteer contributors’ ability to collaborate on an open source project and aims to develop best practices for creating positive contributor experience, nurturing great community culture, and ultimately supporting growth and sustainability of open source projects.