Earlier in 2022, httpie announced that it lost all its stars due to a small error. The devastation of losing 10+ years of attention and traction sounds devastating, and we can all only learn from their experience to ensure we don’t make the same mistake. But, I want to digest whether any of this matters.

Projects with 15K stars are in the top 1000 repositories on GitHub

### Stars are a bad metric

GitHub Stars is not a good metric for engagement or the quality of the project, and I am not alone in that conclusion. However, you can't ignore that the industry has centralized around the GitHub Star.
Since the httpie's stardust, httpie has regained nearly half of the stars it had prior but gained the love and support of a community. Before this incident, I had not used httpie for anything and now find myself testing out the product with my APIs to see the quality of the product.

Losing all their stars became an opportunity to attract more attention to the project and expose that this open source project has a business. I am not insinuating that losing them was intentional, but I am stating that I had not used their service prior and was not aware of the product side of the business until this year. 54k stars on GitHub was validation that at least 54k individual GitHub users cared enough to validate that it was worth checking out. Per information grather from OSS Capital's COSS Community newsletters, projects with 15K stars are in the top 1000 repositories on GitHub.

### Measure with engagement

Httpie has regained its position on the elite list of top open-source projects after being at the bottom only months prior. The value the project provides extends outside of the universe of stargazers. Thousands of projects and developers use their open-source project. They have an avid readership on their blog and an engaged customer base. I led developer relations at GitHub during this incident and was DM'd by quite a few users of httpie.

The accurate metric for growth should be on community, not stars. By focusing on a growing community, httpie could scale quickly and gain exposure to a few OSS trending algorithms. Though their outside contributions were small, they had an established user base. They were in a much better place than most who found themselves in a similar situation, looking for growth and awareness. My recommendation for them is to grow their contributor community.

During my tenure at GitHub, I got the question"How to gain traction in open source," and the response was always similar. Grow a community of users and contributors who would miss you if you were gone. This validation can be from users, contributors, and even stargazers. This is arguably harder to track than stars, but at the end of the day, it comes down to when you experience a stardust event. What community can you reach out to for graceful recovery?

### Measure with OpenSauced

If you are interested in growing your contributor community, consider joining our OpenSauced Insights community. You can get alerts on contribution and community growth, so you always know when to make an impact.

*(thumbnail image generated by Dalle 2)*


The GitHub star is the wrong standard for measurement for growth.

Measuring success in open source

GitHub launched in 2008 with the tagline, “[Social Code Hosting](https://web.archive.org/web/20081111061111/http://github.com/),” but is GitHub a social coding network today?

### Is GitHub a Social Network?

To answer the question, no, GitHub is today's code collaboration platform. The developer network GitHub has built centralizes around private and open-source project collaboration. Though today their focus has broadened beyond being a social network, you must see the 100 million developers on the platform and think, why not call it a social network? The challenge for most contributors is the silo created when they only work in one or two repositories (probably private).

### Open Source Highlights

At OpenSauced, we are looking to break the barrier for contributors in open source with our newest feature, Open Sauced Highlights, ushering in a new phase of Social Coding.

[![bdougie's highlight](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/5713670/220782577-9124a92b-0e1a-4f38-92ac-2ff7e54870e5.png)](https://insights.opensauced.pizza/user/bdougie)

Where an average contributor may contribute to one project during their career, we see an opportunity to highlight those contributions and share your experience with others. Whether you are just starting in open-source or the core maintainer of [trpc/trpc](https://insights.opensauced.pizza/node/dashboard/filter/trpc/trpc), we would love to see your highlights. 

> Watch the demo of me creating my first highlight below

[![highlights announcement on youtube](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/5713670/220782838-b546430b-56e3-4316-a572-88b2e0719029.png)](https://youtu.be/yOwQJ3zGPpI)


GitHub launched in 2008 with the tagline, “Social Code Hosting,” but is GitHub a social coding network today?

The Return of Social Coding

Open source projects can be a great way to retain engineers, as they provide a platform for engineers to collaborate on and contribute to meaningful projects. This can help to keep engineers engaged and motivated, and can also provide opportunities for personal and professional growth.

### Create community first

One way that open source projects can help to retain engineers is by providing a sense of community and collaboration. Engineers who participate in open-source projects have the opportunity to work with a diverse group of people from around the world, which can be both stimulating and rewarding. This sense of community can help to foster a sense of belonging and engagement, which can in turn help to retain talented engineers.

### Turn open-source into opportunity

Another way that open source projects can help to retain engineers is by providing opportunities for personal and professional growth. Participating in open-source projects allows engineers to develop new skills and expertise, which can help to keep them engaged and motivated. It can also provide opportunities for engineers to take on leadership roles and have a real impact on the direction of the project, which can be a highly rewarding experience.

### Ride the wave

Furthermore, open-source projects can help to retain engineers by providing a platform for them to showcase their skills and expertise to a wider audience. Engineers who contribute to open-source projects have the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities to a global community of fellow developers, which can be a great way to build their reputation and advance their careers.

Overall, open-source projects can provide a powerful platform for retaining engineers by fostering a sense of community, providing opportunities for personal and professional growth, and enabling engineers to showcase their skills and expertise. This can help to keep engineers engaged, motivated, and committed to their work, and can ultimately help organizations to retain top talent.



Open source projects can be a great way to retain engineers, as they provide a platform for engineers to collaborate on and contribute to meaningful projects. 

Retaining the best engineers

From my time at GitHub, I learned that the label “good first issue” was created in response to the popularity of the first-timers-only project. Thanks to folks like [Scott Hanselman](https://insights.opensauced.pizza/user/shanselman) and [Kent C. Dodds](https://insights.opensauced.pizza/user/kentcdodds), there is a pathway into open-source contributions that is approachable. The good first issue adds a label to identify bugs and minor fixes for anyone looking for a safe space to try their hand at an approachable contribution.
*This blog post came out of a series of tweets I created last year.*

[![preview of the tweet mentioned](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/5713670/215290449-2ec23c92-334f-4bd7-be8a-ccb22c82a057.png)
](https://twitter.com/bdougieYO/status/1561746501738459137)



## Good first issues today

Fast forward to today, and you can’t ask someone how to find good first issues and have them rattle off goodfirstissue.dev or firstpr.me or even opensource.guide. As someone who leads developer advocacy at GitHub, I can say most of those folks have not used those tools, and I can say that with confidence because the majority have not been updated since before 2018.

Today there are 280 million repositories on GitHub. Of that number, only 230 thousand have more than five contributors. There is a lot of answer to why that is, but to state it, only 0.1% of the projects on GitHub provide an approachable space for new contributors.


## What’s wrong with good first issues?

Unfortunately, the notion that you can browse GitHub and search for a contribution is invalid, and we have been preaching that sentiment for years. I share this as an advocate for open-source, but good first issues do exist. Most of what is labeled needs more context for anyone new contributor to approach. There is a lot to be desired regarding good first issues. We have got this far, and I haven’t shared the punchline, but here goes:
> The best good first issues are the ones you open.
Now, I can explain.


## Purpose-driven good first issues

Good first issues exist for the sole purpose of leaving a breadcrumb for a new contributor. These are issues that a maintainer could complete in less than 10mins. They are not set up to take a lot of time, and if you follow my beliefs, there should be a clear path to the solution provided by the person who labeled the issue.

The clear path to the solution can be the actual code to be copied and pasted with a line number or a rough idea of its implementation. Some recent good first issues include fixing broken links and adjusting mobile responsiveness. The other truth is that exploring projects you have never used, hoping to contribute, is worse than sharing quotes from a book you have never read. Before you try to do any project, please install it. Cloning a repo down from GitHub and running it locally can expose many opportunities for contributions. 

https://hot.opensauced.pizza

![](https://paper-attachments.dropboxusercontent.com/s_2FD9E296945D49A46BA2E3670B43E3C7BF8D4BDB8ECA0D0929CC68CE90FB97A7_1674938128550_Screen+Shot+2023-01-17+at+11.14.40+PM.png)



We have been running a small exploration project to discover the hottest new repositories on GitHub, and most of those projects barely have a README. These projects need extra eyeballs, and we would love for folks to try them out and report back. All projects need to start somewhere; it takes a particular person to be willing to try a new project and provide context on their experience. Not every open-source project is created equal, just like the same person doesn't create every issue.


## Examples of good first issues

Let’s look at some completed good first issues in the OpenSauced org.

[![issue 295 preview](https://opengraph.githubassets.com/92a34945aa0405c0fae796e50f9958fb8781cf23b36fd00f7886c21949114670/open-sauced/hot/issues/295)](https://github.com/open-sauced/hot/issues/295) 

[open-sauced/hot#295](https://github.com/open-sauced/hot/issues/295)







This issue was opened initially due to inconsistencies with the fonts in the project. The issue clearly states the problem and provides a solution. This was picked up by a brand new contributor.

Another issue was an opportunity for refactoring duplicated code into its own reusable React Component. Now, this required someone with knowledge of React, but each line was outlined where it a duplicated, and a previously merged pull request was provided to show where similar work was completed and could be referenced. 

[![preview of issue 287](https://opengraph.githubassets.com/004a85c10be69f65e682fabfbe628d12b1ad37ecbca92ea66acb75901e24cd2b/open-sauced/hot/issues/287)](https://github.com/open-sauced/hot/issues/287)

[open-sauced/hot#287](https://github.com/open-sauced/hot/issues/287) 


This is work I could have done in about 10 mins, but I chose instead to leave for a new issue for a new contributor. The second contribution was completed by a new contributor who continued contributing throughout the summer and later became a full-time engineer at OpenSauced. The good first issue was a stepping stone to learning the project and becoming a consistent contributor.

I will leave you with this thought. If you are genuinely interested in leveling up and contributing to open source through good first issues, start by opening up issues you found and getting mentorship from the existing contributors or maintainers. You and the project will be better off for it, and at the very least, try running the thing locally.

If you want to find projects or track your own, consider checking out OpenSauced. And, of course, if you are looking for new contributors to your project, do not hesitate to reach out on our [discord](https://discord.gg/opensauced).



There is a lot to be desired when it comes to good first issues.

Good first issues don’t exist

We did it! Today we celebrate our 1000th developer on the platform since our public launch in December 2022. 

Seven months ago, we started building this project to encourage contributions to open source. It began by supporting maintainers and companies just trying to understand the frequency of contributions. Recently we added the ability to auth using your GitHub to give us a better idea of where a developer might want to contribute.

### No more gatekeeping

There are a lot of barriers to contributing, and I don’t think finding projects to contribute to should be the first hurdle. More companies are starting open source by default, and employees are choosing to work for open-source projects thanks to the trend towards remote work we saw in 2020. Now is a better time than ever to participate.

Also, in 2020, we built [app.opensauced.pizza](https://app.opensauced.pizza/), a CRM-like experience to manage your existing contributions. In 2021, we built an [hot.opensauced.pizza](https://hot.opensauced.pizza/), a discovery engine, and [API](https://api.opensauced.pizza/) to find the hottest up-and-coming projects to contribute. Today, we plan to close the gap between the best developers and great projects by combining our learning into the newest tool in our kitchen, [insights.opensauced.pizza](https://insights.opensauced.pizza/start).


### Why is this working?

Developers want to be connected to something bigger than what they are building. Open source is more than a project. It is a movement. As the world continues to become more connected, developers have an opportunity, despite their physical location, to participate in building the next phase of technology. 

Companies are already choosing open source more often when building their future roadmaps. The innovation we have seen in Ai, Frontend Tooling, and Infrastructure has been fueled by the advent of open-source. The best employers use a lot of open-source and allow employees to contribute back to projects or, even better, to use company time to do it.


> 82% of IT leaders are more likely to select a vendor who contributes to the open source community ([source](https://www.redhat.com/en/resources/state-of-enterprise-open-source-report-2022)).

We are no longer limited by where we went to school or were previously employed. Our resumes can live as [Highlights on OpenSauced](https://opensauced.pizza/blog/social-coding-is-back), a shareable validation for previous work. Open source is ushering in a new generation of developers not limited to Cracking the Code Interviews. OpenSauced will catalyze change in how we approach sourcing the best talent. 

[Connect your GitHub today](https://insights.opensauced.pizza/) and join us in our movement towards 100k developers that choose open source. 

We did it! Today we celebrate our 1000th developer on the platform since our public launch in December 2022. 

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