For the last few years, one challenge that has constantly been discussed within the open-source community is how to make open source healthier for everyone.

This isn’t to say that open source is an unhealthy space; rather, it has a much more significant positive impact than most people imagine. However, anytime a project sees a flurry of contributors trying their hands at getting in their contributions and Pull Requests, whether that is a planned occasion like Hacktoberfest, a period of the project going trending on GitHub, or just a random unplanned surge, there happens to be an overwhelming amount of activity for the project maintainers and community leaders to tackle. The truth is that for most people, contributing to open source is an activity they partake in outside their day-to-day lives, and more often than not, they aren’t equipped to deal with such surges of activity. At such points, contributors sharing the responsibility of supporting and sustaining community health makes for a better, more welcoming community for everyone.

Therefore, in this talk, we will explore what community health means in open-source communities and how contributors can play their role in making it better.

I had the opportunity to participate in a discussion on the same with the GitHub Education team: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1947516149

I have also written about this topic in the following blog: https://appwrite.io/blog/post/make-open-source-healthier