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Values

Inspired by you, the community, through your actions and stories.

  1. Everyone is welcome! Participants in Hacktoberfest represented 151 countries and thousands of unique skill sets. This program welcomes everyone already who’s already part of the open source software community, and anyone who is interested in sectioning in.
  2. Quantity is fun, quality is key. Participating in Hacktoberfest leads to personal growth, professional opportunities, and community building. However, it all begins with meaningful contributions to open source software.
  3. Short-term action, long-term impact. In the open source software community, we are standing on the shoulders of those who came before us. Your participation has a lasting effect on people and technology long after October. This is a voyage not a race.

Getting Started with Hacktoberfest

We ask all participants to read through the details to ensure that the global community is working toward a shared goal. Thank you for honoring the values and following the rules of participation.

Participation Details

  • Hacktoberfest is open to everyone in our global community. Whether you’re a seasoned contributor or looking for projects to contribute to for the first time, you’re welcome to participate.
  • Pull requests can be made in any participating GitHub-hosted repositories/projects.
  • Maintainers can opt-in to participate by classifying their projects with the hacktoberfest topic.
  • Your pull requests will count toward your participation if they are in a repository with the hacktoberfest topic and once they have been merged, approved by a maintainer or labelled as hacktoberfest-accepted.
  • Additionally, any pull request with the hacktoberfest-accepted label, submitted to any public GitHub repository, with or without the hacktoberfest topic, will be considered valid for Hacktoberfest.
  • You can sign up anytime between October 1 and October 31. Just be sure to sign up on the official Hacktoberfest website for your pull requests to count.

Participation Rules

  • To get a prize, you must make four eligible pull requests (PRs) between October 1–31 in any time zone.

  • Pull requests prior to the rule change on October 3, 2020 at 12:00:00 UTC can be to any public repository on GitHub, not just the ones highlighted.

  • Pull requests following the rule change must be to a participating public repository on GitHub, and have been merged, labelled as hacktoberfest-accepted, or approved.

  • Pull requests labelled as hacktoberfest-accepted will count toward to Hacktoberfest from any public repository on GitHub, with or without the hacktoberfest topic.

  • The pull request must contain commits you made yourself. If a maintainer reports your pull request as spam, it will not be counted toward your participation in Hacktoberfest. If a maintainer reports behavior that’s not in line with the values of Hacktoberfest or the project’s code of conduct, you will be ineligible to participate. This year, the first 70,000 participants can earn a T-shirt or plant a tree.

  • To put the rules in a form consistent with the spirit of Hacktoberfest:

Quality Standards

In line with Hacktoberfest value #2 (Quantity is fun, quality is key), we have provided examples of pull requests that we consider to be low-quality contributions (which we discourage).

  • Pull requests that are automated (e.g. scripted opening pull requests to remove whitespace/fix typos/optimize images).
  • Pull requests that are disruptive (e.g. taking someone else's branch/commits and making a pull request).
  • Pull requests that are regarded by a project maintainer as a hindrance vs. helping.
  • Something that's clearly an attempt to simply +1 your pull request count for October.

Last but not least, one pull request to fix a typo is fine, but 4 pull requests to remove a stray whitespace is not.

Let's Work Together to Reduce Spam

  • Spammy pull requests can be given a label that contains the word "invalid" or "spam" to discount them. Maintainers are faced with the majority of spam that occurs during Hacktoberfest, and we dislike spam just as much as you. If you're a maintainer, please label any spammy pull requests submitted to the repositories you maintain as "invalid" or "spam", and close them. Pull requests with this label won't count toward Hacktoberfest.

  • There's a fourteen-day review window for all pull requests before they count toward completing the challenge. Once a participant has submitted four eligible pull requests (ready-to-review, not drafts), the review window begins. This period gives maintainers time to identify and label spammy pull requests as invalid. If the pull requests are not marked as invalid within that window, they will allow the user to complete the Hacktoberfest challenge. If any of the pull requests are labeled as invalid, the user will return to the pending state until they have four eligible pull requests, at which point the review period will start again.

  • Bad repositories will be excluded. In the past, we've seen many repositories that encourage participants to make simple pull requests – such as adding their name to a file – to quickly gain a pull request toward completing Hacktoberfest. While this may be a learning tool for new contributors, it goes against one of our core values for Hacktoberfest. The quality of pull requests is paramount; quantity comes second. These repositories do not encourage quality contributions and provide an unfair advantage in completing the Hacktoberfest challenge. We've implemented a system to block these repositories, and any pull requests submitted to such repositories will not be counted.

More information on reporting a repository that doesn't follow Hacktoberfest's values can be found on the official site.

Person sitting with laptop infront of commit tree - from undraw.io