Open Source Tips from Maintainers for Maintainers
Tags: hacktoberfest, opensource
Published: 2019-10-18 19:36:48

---
title: Open Source Tips from Maintainers for Maintainers
published: true
description: Maintaining an open-source project is much more than pushing code. In this blog series, various maintainers of open-source projects are sharing some of their key learnings and tips. 
tags: hacktoberfest, open-source, opensource
cover_image: https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/skjab36aqkqngcds3cpi.png
---

Over the last few years open source has become increasingly more popular. With initiatives such as Hacktoberfest or 24 Pull Requests there are plenty of initiatives to drive more contributions in open source. One thing that people often tend to forget though are the pains and challenges that maintainers often face, especially if your project is rapidly growing or you are new to maintaining a project. And when you search the internet, the resources for maintainers are often limited.

## From Maintainers for Maintainers

This year for Hacktoberfest, Twilio decided to kick off a series of blog posts from various maintainers of large open-source projects and communities to share learnings and tips with the community and other maintainers. 

Throughout October, we are publishing one maintainer tip blog post every Wednesday. You can find them all by heading over to the [Twilio Blog](https://www.twilio.com/blog/tag/maintainer-tips) but we wanted to give you a quick summary of each of these blog posts and we'll update this list as they are being published.

## [Aligning with Intention in Open Source](https://www.twilio.com/blog/aligning-intention-open-source)
In this blog post [*Evelyn Masso*](https://twitter.com/outofambit) is sharing one of her key learnings during her [Processing Foundation fellowship](https://processingfoundation.org/fellowships) working on the [p5.js](https://p5js.org/) project. Contributing is great but how do you make sure your contributions are in line with the project’s goals?

[Read Evelyn's post on the Twilio blog](https://www.twilio.com/blog/aligning-intention-open-source)

## [10 lessons I learned from maintaining an open source community for 4 years](https://www.twilio.com/blog/10-lessons-learned-maintaining-open-source-community)
Five years ago [*Linda Peng*](https://twitter.com/lpnotes) started the open source community [CodeBuddies](https://codebuddies.org/) to *find remote running partners for code*. In this blog post she's sharing 10 of her key lessons learned during the last years working on CodeBuddies.

[Read Linda's post on the Twilio blog](https://www.twilio.com/blog/10-lessons-learned-maintaining-open-source-community)

## [Designing and Enforcing Code of Conducts](https://www.twilio.com/blog/designing-enforcing-codes-of-conduct)
Having a Code of Conduct in your open source project or community is becoming the de-facto standard with various projects providing easy to use templates. In this blog post, [*Kat Marchán*](https://twitter.com/maybekatz) shares learnings from their time founding communities like [lgbtq.technology](https://lgbtq.technology) and [WeAllJS](https://wealljs.org/) and maintaining various open-source projects. In this post, you’ll learn why having a clear enforcing process is key to great communities.

[Read Kat's post on the Twilio blog](https://www.twilio.com/blog/designing-enforcing-codes-of-conduct)

## [How to Hacktoberfest: Tips and Tricks for Maintaining your Repo and your Mental Health](https://www.twilio.com/blog/how-to-hacktoberfest-tips-and-tricks-for-maintaining-your-repo-and-your-mental-health)
Hacktoberfest can be a wonderful and hectic time depending on how many contributions your projects gets during this time. In this blog post [Carly Vanderwert](https://github.com/Whatthefoxsays) from the Twilio Developer Education team is sharing her top tips and tricks she learned from maintaining the [SendGrid docs](https://github.com/sendgrid/docs) project. 

[Read Carly's post on the Twilio blog](https://www.twilio.com/blog/how-to-hacktoberfest-tips-and-tricks-for-maintaining-your-repo-and-your-mental-health)

## More to Come

We hope that this series of blog posts can be helpful for other maintainers but ultimately we want to hear from you what you would like to learn more about! So feel free to share your feedback below this post or by sending me an email to [dkundel@twilio.com](mailto:dkundel@twilio.com).