What is Hacktoberfest and how does it work?

Hacktoberfest is an annual open source celebration held every October by DigitalOcean. Participants submit pull requests to participating open source projects throughout the month, and those who complete the required number of accepted PRs earn rewards. It is a low pressure way for first time contributors to get started in open source.

Is Appwrite open source?

Yes, Appwrite is fully open source and has been since launching in 2019. The code is available on GitHub for developers to use, fork, and contribute to. Over 700 contributors have shaped Appwrite into what it is today.

How can I contribute to Appwrite?

You can contribute by picking up open issues on the Appwrite GitHub repositories, improving documentation, translating content, or fixing bugs. The team welcomes contributors of all experience levels, especially during events like Hacktoberfest. Start by reading the contributing guide in the main appwrite/appwrite repository.

Do I need to be an experienced developer to contribute to open source?

No, open source projects need help across code, documentation, translations, design, and community moderation. Many maintainers actively label issues as good first issues to help newcomers ramp up. Starting small builds confidence and teaches you how real teams collaborate.

What kinds of contributions are valued in open source?

Bug fixes, documentation improvements, translations, test coverage, and feature work are all valued. The best contributions solve real problems for users rather than chasing PR counts. Quality over quantity matters more to maintainers than the number of pull requests submitted.

Open-source contributors make the community great

Open source (OSS) seems to be the buzzword in tech these days. A lot of companies claim to be it, and even more, companies seem to be the open source version of their corporate counterpart. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't, either way, open source is here to stay. But only because of the developers who maintain it. In this post, we want to celebrate the OSS community who has built Appwrite, with a special shout-out to the contributors in our latest release and the best open source event there is, Hacktoberfest.

Appwrite loves open source

For those of you who have been following Appwrite, you might have noticed how much we value open source and the community that keeps it going. Appwrite has been a part of that community since 2019, but the team has been contributing to open source way before Appwrite became an entity. Most of our team members were first community members before they joined. To us, this embodies an important mindset that instates open source into the core of Appwrite. It is the foundation we build on and will always be at the heart of everything we do. So if one thing in life is certain, it is that Appwrite is open source.

To be open source

But what does this actually mean to be open source as a company? It means that our code is open for other developers to use, copy, and fork, but most importantly, to contribute to. It's about being transparent and about building in the open, it is about giving back to those who helped us get here. And with over 700+ contributors contributing to Appwrite, it's fair enough to say that the Appwrite you see today was built by you, the open source community.

open source community

1.4 contributors

The latest version of Appwrite was built with the help of over 40 developers, truly showing off what building together can achieve and how the community comes together. The collective knowledge and skills of the open source community make it possible to do a lot more with less. With this in mind, we want to shed light on the contributors of the Appwrite 1.4 release and thank every single dev in the community who helped us launch. It was the biggest release to date, and that also led to having the most contributions ever. We are grateful for each contribution, from coding to translations to documentation, with each pull request Appwrite improved. We want to celebrate each and every one of you. Therefore our deepest gratitude goes out to:

@keul who contributed to our Readme
@sarthakroy2002 who updated codeql-action to v3
@vrabe who updated traditional Chinese translation
@kalpeshT101 who contributed to our Readme
@Sushrut1101 who updated actions/checkout to v3
@karniv00l who helped us fix a bug that appeared when user not found exception happened
@vimode who helped us update Windows powershell commands
@megatank58 who helped us fix Appwrite upgradation bug
@pomarec who fixed French translation
@aayushbisen who added a restart policy in the appwrite-worker-messaging service
@motasimmakki who contributed to docs
@BoynChan who updated Chinese documentation
@ks129 who helped us fix a bug that appeared with Function status code 500
@munyoudoum who helped us fix the expire format in authentication
@singhbhaskar who helped us fix the session create bug in OAuth sessions
@rinkuhasija who contributed to a code sample in documentation
@yatharth1706 who helped us fix email already exists error that occurred when the same phone number was used
@Atsurak who contributed to documentation
@lucasctd who helped us set correct values to LogOwl adapter
@faisalill who helped us fix a bug in databases
@jaivix who helped us fixed a bug that occurred while creating a new team with existing teamid
@vaibhavagarwal220 who helped us add an error message for invoking verification on previously anonymous users
@Pranav2612000 who helped us fix an email verification bug
@mendelgordon who contributed to our documentation
@Miguelii who contributed to our Portuguese email template
@safwanyp who fixed a bug that solved team membership appearing after the team is deleted
@Suven-p who fixed a bug in x-appwrite-header
@pranjalg13 who contributed to our documentation
@fliitor who fixed message inversion error
@Suven-p who helped us fix deployment issues in CLI
@rohan220217 who helped us fix a bug in the session delete modal
@byawitz who helped us fix deployment issues
@erezhod who helped us fix Apple code snippet bugs in our documentation
@Chaitanya-Upadhye who helped us fix a bug that appeared in indexes
@safwanyp who helped us fix a bug that prevented the document from updating after deleting the array element
@KaranJagtiani who helped us fiix CDN code sample

Every single contributor and every single contribution made the product better for the next developer. That is what makes it all the more exciting, knowing that your PR actually has value for the next person. With that in mind, shouldn't we all contribute to OSS projects? Maybe, but where to begin?

Hacktoberfest to kick off your open source journey

As mentioned previously, many of our team members were first contributors before they joined. Our very own Christy Jacob once started as a contributor during Hacktoberfest, the largest celebration of open source, and is now a Lead Engineer building Appwrite Cloud. It all starts with that first step and pull request.

So there is more to open source contributing than just helping build a project. It can help you progress in your future career by learning, building your portfolio, networking, and even finding job opportunities. All the more reasons to jump on the wagon. With that said, we also understand that for some, contributing might seem daunting, but it really isn't if you get the right help and guidance. This is where Hacktoberfest comes in. It is an amazing event that allows you to contribute to many different projects in many different ways together with others, so you don't have to start your journey alone. It started on the 1st of October 2023, and you can join the entire month. This is your chance to kickstart your open source journey.

We want to invite developers to come join us during Hacktoberfest. Together, we continue to build Appwrite through the power of open source. Allowing every developer to have the capabilities of hundreds of developers through one platform.

Come join us and build like a team of hundreds.

Build like a team of hundreds