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This month marks the 11th year of Hacktoberfest, a month-long virtual event that encourages developers to contribute to the open-source projects that so many of us rely on. What started as a small hackathon founded by DigitalOcean in 2014 has now transformed into a significant virtual gathering of the global developer community. During Hacktoberfest, tens of thousands of developers volunteer their time and expertise to help maintain open-source technologies. This event is crucial not only for encouraging participation in open-source projects but also for providing developers with opportunities to learn new skills, teach others, and connect with the broader community. This year is particularly significant for me as it marks my first Hacktoberfest as CEO of DigitalOcean, and I wanted to share insights into the history of this event and why open-source is vital to the developer community.
Hacktoberfest: A Celebration of Open Source
At its essence, Hacktoberfest is a celebration of open-source—the projects that power much of today’s most popular websites and applications. It is not an exaggeration to say that the internet as we know it would look very different without open-source projects. These projects are often maintained and updated by developers on their own time, with little to no budget. Open-source is the backbone of modern technology, and developers who maintain and contribute to these projects are the backbone of open-source.
Hacktoberfest aims to rally even more developers, including those new to open-source and those returning, to contribute to these projects during a dedicated month. By participating in Hacktoberfest, developers can make tangible improvements to tools used by millions of people daily, while learning new skills and meeting fellow members of the developer community along the way.
The Origin and Evolution of Hacktoberfest
Hacktoberfest began in 2014 as a small hackathon organized by DigitalOcean. That first year, 676 participants each completed 50 commits to various open-source projects. At the time of the inaugural event, DigitalOcean was a relatively new cloud provider focused on providing developers with simple and efficient virtual machines to build without the complexity or costs of larger providers. Hacktoberfest was, and still is, closely aligned with DigitalOcean’s mission of enabling developers to spend more time creating software that changes the world.
Over the last decade, Hacktoberfest has grown into a much larger virtual event. In 2023, over 98,000 people contributed to the effort. The event has also evolved in other ways, including supporting projects on GitLab as well as GitHub, adding checks to increase the quality of pull/merge requests, and allowing projects to opt-in to the program each year to ensure it doesn’t become a burden for open-source maintainers.
Participation Statistics and Achievements
Last year, 98,855 people from 184 countries registered for Hacktoberfest, resulting in 118,469 contributions across 139,422 repositories. Over the ten years of Hacktoberfest, there have been over 2.4 million accepted pull/merge requests for open-source projects. Everyone who has participated in Hacktoberfest should be proud of this monumental achievement. What excites me even more is hearing stories from those who have benefited from the contributions made during Hacktoberfest. I am eager to learn about what will be accomplished for open-source this year.
Success Stories
For instance, in 2021, we heard from the maintainer of Boa Constrictor, a .NET Screenplay Pattern that assists with Web UI and REST API test automation: “Hacktoberfest 2021 was a smashing success for Boa Constrictor! We completed 41 pull requests with 151 commits and over 10K new lines of code from 11 total contributors. Here’s a summary of everything we accomplished together.”
Last year, one of many stories we heard was from Amruth Pillai, who maintains Reactive Resume. He mentioned, “Throughout this period, the project experienced a surge in activity, with numerous new features, bug reports, and issues contributed by both users and contributors. This collective effort strengthened the project’s resilience and security.”
A True Community Event
One of the things I love about Hacktoberfest is that it’s truly a community event that transcends any one company. While DigitalOcean is the founding sponsor of Hacktoberfest, it’s the community of developers that keeps the event going, along with other companies who sponsor the event, including Cloudflare and Quira. Within DigitalOcean, we have a passionate group of employees who dedicate their time to creating the Hacktoberfest website, sending emails, answering community questions, and tracking pull/merge requests, in addition to their other responsibilities outside of Hacktoberfest. I want to thank these employees and all those outside of DigitalOcean who are involved in making Hacktoberfest a great event this year and for many years to come.
The Importance of Open Source
At DigitalOcean, we strongly believe in the developer and open-source community. We hold the view that the more accessible tools are to developers, the more they can create great software. Open-source tools and projects have democratized software development, allowing anyone with internet access to contribute, learn, and innovate. The ethos of open-source aligns with DigitalOcean’s mission to simplify cloud computing so developers can spend more time coding and less time managing infrastructure.
Getting Involved
If you want to jump straight into participating, registration is now open at Hacktoberfest.com. Whether you are a seasoned developer or new to coding, Hacktoberfest is an excellent opportunity to get involved in the open-source community, improve your skills, and contribute to projects that have a global impact. Each contribution, no matter how small, plays a part in enhancing the tools and technologies we use every day.
Conclusion
We can’t wait to see how you make an impact this Hacktoberfest. Sign up to participate at Hacktoberfest.com today, and happy hacking! By joining this event, you become part of a larger movement that supports and sustains the open-source ecosystem. Your contributions help ensure that these valuable projects continue to thrive and evolve, ultimately benefiting the entire tech community and beyond.
For more information and to register, visit Hacktoberfest.
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