Cockroach Labs is proud to participate in DigitalOcean’s annual Hacktoberfest, a celebration of open source and community innovation. The month-long event encourages everyone from experienced developers to students and code newbies to make positive contributions to an ever-growing community. All backgrounds and skill levels are encouraged to complete the challenge. Once a hacker submits four high-quality pull requests, they receive a custom t-shirt from DigitalOcean.
We’ve already seen contributors improve our docs and are thankful for this incredible community.
Open Source is a function of good
Cockroach Labs supports Hacktoberfest’s investment in open source. As long-standing open source community members, we were unfortunately unsurprised by the spam that flooded repositories last week (our repositories included). Our founders and team members have decades of experience in open source, and along the way, have seen the good and the “not so good” that may come from it. While the spammy PRs may have seemed like a harmless act for a small gain, these activities put undue strain on maintainers of open source repos.
In general, open source builds active communities of like-minded individuals who are drawn together to build freely available software for other people to use. These communities are typically welcoming, warm groups of people who interact in code and often form lifelong friendships based in mutual respect. Sometimes, however, an open source initiative can be taken advantage of. Their open nature opens them to this very “un”open activity. For instance a repo can be forked and used for profit, without giving anything back. In 2019, we took steps to protect our growing community from this sort of activity by changing our license from Apache to BSL--we wanted to give the community all the benefits of open source, while still protecting our IP from bad actors. These bad actors are in the minority, but can still wreak havoc on open source companies and communities.
In order to keep open source alive and well, we need to keep evolving how we think about contributions, licensing, and the rules around community participation. We applaud DigitalOcean’s quick response, and rule change, to keep Hacktoberfest a great event for all.
How to Contribute to CockroachDB this Hacktoberfest
In the spirit of Hacktoberfest, we invite you to contribute to CockroachDB regardless of your database or open source experience. We’ve labeled the CockroachDB repository as open for PRs, and are readily accepting Hacktoberfest submissions.
You can work on code or documentation issues, or contribute apps to our sample apps repository. Whether you’re a new or experienced developer or tech writer, a seasoned contributor or new to open source, there’s something for everyone:
| Suitable for | Project | Resources |
| For new developers | Create a to-do app using CockroachDB and a language/ORM of your choice | How to contribute to the to-do apps repository |
| For Go developers | Work on CockroachDB code: List of good first issues | Your first CockroachDB PR |
| For tech writers and docs enthusiasts | Help improve CockroachDB docs: List of good first issues | Docs contribution guide |
More instructions on how to contribute can be found in our Cockroach Labs Hacktoberfest repository. And if you need help, have questions, or want to chat, we invite you to join the #contributors channel in our Cockroach Labs Community Slack.
Good luck, and happy Hacktober!
Additional Hacktoberfest Resources
- An Absolute Beginner's Checklist for Hacktoberfest
- Open Source Contributor Summit: How to Make High-Quality PRs
- Hacktoberfest FAQs
- How to contribute to open source without compromising your mental health and work-life balance
- CockroachDB Community Slack
