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How One Guy Ruined #Hacktoberfest2020 #Drama

JavaScript Joel on October 06, 2020

Hacktoberfest If you aren't familar, Hacktoberfest is an annual event that occurs every October. It is held by Digital Ocean and encoura...
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Vaibhav Khulbe • Edited

Thanks for writing this. People need to understand that if you are into open-source contributions, then do it throughout the year or whenever is the need. Hacktoberfest should not be the ONLY reason to make PRs or raise issues. Sad thing is, people will still spam or make bad PRs just to get the tee or stickers. I mean how many times will you do this and show yourself as a cool open-source contributor?

I will soon be writing an article this week (releasing this Friday) on a similar topic. I hope it will help people understand more.

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JavaScript Joel

Post your article here when you are done, I'd love to read it! Cheers 🍻

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Vaibhav Khulbe
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JavaScript Joel

Will read now 👍

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JavaScript Joel

I'm hopeful with Digital Ocean's new opt-in approach, open source maintainers won't be in hiding now. I feel like this whole drama has made Hacktoberfest better!

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Daniel J. Summers

Hard to believe people are that hard up for a simple T-shirt. I guess the shirt may convey some programming prowess, but still...

(or maybe these are people from AWS and Google Cloud, trying to bankrupt upstart cloud vendor (and DEV sponsor) Digital Ocean - LOL. It's 2020 on the Internet - who knows?)

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Sergey Kislyakov

Opt-in was an obvious (and good) solution. Good they did that.

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JavaScript Joel

It probably took this event to make Hacktoberfest better. So in the end... it was a good thing?

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Sergey Kislyakov

Yeah, though I find it strange this wasn't the case in the previous Hacktoberfest. I guess everyone wants a T-shirt in these hard times.

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JavaScript Joel

It was a problem in previous Hacktoberfests though it was amplified because of this video.

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Ben Halpern

Ooof

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JavaScript Joel

Ooof indeed

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𒎏Wii 🏳️‍⚧️

Relevant

This isn't a new problem and it was almost certainly not caused by one single youtuber with a few thousand active subscribers at most. The blame for this is on Digital Ocean, not on some dude on the internet.

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JavaScript Joel

It was a problem in previous Hacktoberfests though it was amplified because of this video.

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JavaScript Joel

🤣

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Meghan (she/her)

Hacktoberfest was and is a mistake

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JavaScript Joel

It's improving 😁