Hacktoberfest: Contribution Chronicles

Hacktoberfest is a yearly event by DigitalOcean that supports the open source community. Many things we use every day rely on open source software. For example, Android and cloud servers use Linux, while Macs is part of BSD family. GitHub, owned by Microsoft, is the most popular site for storing open source projects and has many features for collaboration.

My Pull Requests (PRs) in Hacktoberfest

• Scrollbar color issue
• Added a document for a class
• Fixed some typos
• Added a new option for a CLI tool

When I made my first contribution to open source, I felt nervous. I worried about making mistakes, wasting someone’s time with my pull request (PR), or not following the community rules. I spent a lot of time looking for issues I felt confident I could solve. However, I found that I needed to understand the projects better before I could tackle any issues. Even the scrollbar issue, which seemed simple, felt daunting when I first asked the maintainer to assign it to me. Now, I realize my anxiety was unnecessary. Most things become clearer once you dive into a project.

While working on my PR for improving the Incus documentation, the maintainer asked me to fix my commit to follow the community rules. Even though the fix was minor and didn’t affect the code or the CI/CD pipeline, he was polite and insisted on the no-anonymous contribution rule. It took me about 15 minutes to update the files and another 15 minutes to learn how to build the documentation site on my local machine. However, it took me 2 hours to understand the command git commit –sign-commits and why it was important.

My Productive October

This October has been my most productive and satisfying month of the year. I learned a lot by contributing to different open source projects. My motivation made a big difference. By choosing issues to work on, I set personal goals that felt like promises to the community.

I learned how to implement the --watch option for CLI tools by studying a Node.js project. Then, I recreated that feature in another project using Rust. I started learning Rust from scratch and was able to contribute within two weeks. I also discovered that most maintainers online are friendly, and the community is there to help, not criticize.

If you want to join Hacktoberfest 2026, don’t spend too much time searching for issues you feel fully confident about. Choose issues that interest you and think through them as you go. You don’t need to know every detail before you start; having a rough idea is enough.