I read this article a few days ago and enjoyed learning about Shubheksha’s journey into open source.

Then Kent C. Dodds pointed out to me that negative experience Shubheksha mentioned — with the impatient project maintainer — actually happened when she was trying to contribute to Free Code Camp’s open source project!

Here’s the full interaction.

The core team member in question was usually helpful and supportive. But in this case, he wasn’t.

And just like that, a Shubheksha — a prospective contributor — walked away feeling discouraged. So discouraged that it took her months to gather the courage to attempt to contribute to open source again.

I am grateful that she did return to open source, though, because she’s clearly good at coding, as evidenced by her contributions being accepted into a major open source project like FireFox.

Our open source community prides itself on being helpful to new contributors. Nearly 100 coders who’ve never contributed to open source before have successfully closed first-timers-only issues on our repository.

But that doesn’t make up for the fact that Shubheksha walked away feeling less than welcome.

This story has a happy ending, though. She came back to open source. I’ve cleared things up with her, and she may even contribute to Free Code Camp in the future.

The takeaways for all the open source project maintainers reading this are:

• Always be welcoming to people who are interested in contributing to your project.
• Operate under the assumption that they have never contributed to open source before.
• Keep in mind that it may have taken them a lot of time to work up the courage to approach you.

The extra effort be worth it when you discover your contributor is the next Shubheksha, who can help you out tremendously once you take the time to answer a few of her questions.