Roles in an open source project
As I’ve said repeatedly in this book, every open source project is different. That being said, we generally see a few different classifications of roles in an open source project. Let’s take a look at them now, starting with the user.
Users
Everyone in an open source project starts by using the project. It’s the starting point of the scratch-your-own-itch model of open source; if a project is useful to you, you become invested in it.
As an aside, something we will dig more into in Chapter 6, Making Your Project Feel Welcoming, and to some extent in Chapter 7, Growing Contributors to Maintainers, is why keeping a focus on how users can use the project is so important. It’s also important to recognize that not every user will be a contributor, and that’s okay. However, with lots of users comes not only a higher likelihood of contributors but also a social aspect, which shows potential contributors the value and...
