Amruta RanadeEven though the DigitalOcean team has done a fantastic job creating a helpful FAQs page on the Hacktoberfest website, I have noticed Hacktoberfest newbies asking the following questions repeatedly. Hope this post helps answers some of the additional FAQs and saves the Hacktoberfest maintainers some time:
What is Hacktoberfest?
A monthlong celebration of open source software brought to you by DigitalOcean, Intel, and DEV. Make four or more high-quality, meaningful pull requests to open source projects on GitHub in October to earn a t-shirt or plant a tree.
How are my Pull Requests tracked?
After you log in to the Hacktoberfest website with your GitHub account, it'll track the Pull Requests you make in the October.
What repositories can I contribute to?
You can open pull requests for any open source project on GitHub as long as it isn't a spam repository banned by Hacktoberfest community managers (for example: "Add your name" type of repository). For more information, see https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/details
Can I make a PR to my own repository or a friend's repository?
Yes, but it's encouraged to contribute to other repositories instead
Do all PRs have to be in the same repo?
No
Can all 4 PRs be in the same repo?
Yes
Do the PRs have to be merged to be counted?:
No, your pull requests need not be merged to count, but they must not be marked "invalid" by the project maintainer. More details here: https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/details
Does the repository need to have issues?
No
Do the issues need to be marked as hacktoberfest?
No
Are the issues marked good-first-issue beginner-friendly?
Not always. good-first-issue can be a confusing label. good-first-issue doesn't necessarily mean an easy issue for code newbies; it can mean it's an easy issue to get started with the codebase for that project. For example, the CockroachDB good-first-issue are good issues for Go developers who want to get started with CockroachDB contributions. For new developers, we recommend checking out the CockroachDB To-Do apps project or CockroachDB docs project instead.
How do I win a t-shirt?
The first 70,000 folks to make 4 PRs in the month of October will be eligible to get a t-shirt.
Will you run out of t-shirts?
The Hacktoberfest community managers estimate they won't run out of t-shirts well into the third week of October.
