UNV

Exploring ways to stay continuously involved with OSS

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Recently, at maguro.dev #1 supported by KIKKAKE AGENT—hosted by maguro of Deno—I gave a lightning talk (LT) under the title of this article.
This write-up expands and refines what I presented there, in plain text. All OSS commits discussed here are assumed to be volunteer work done in one’s spare time, not part of a paid job.
And this is translated from this Japanese Article.

First Commit

Do you have any OSS projects you contribute to on a regular basis?
I’m working on Biome, a Rust-based web toolchain (linter/formatter). It’s just one of many open-source projects I contribute to.

Looking back, my very first commit was in November 2022, back when Rome still existed as a company and the repo was called rome/tools. The JS/TS formatter was already usable, and I got a review from the amazing engineer [Micha Reiser]—who’d almost single-handedly built that formatter (ex-Meta, ex-Rome, now at Astral). His “you should write it like this” comments actually made my code much cleaner, and it was a fantastic learning moment. You can still see that exchange in my first PR:

https://github.com/rome/tools/pull/3552

At the time, Rome wasn’t nearly as well-known in the frontend world as Biome is today. It was a project started by seb McKenzie; although it had more GitHub stars than Biome does now, almost no one was using it in production. I started contributing to what became Biome mainly because:

  1. I figured that contributing to an existing OSS project was an efficient way to learn Rust.
  2. It was a Rust tool for JS/TS, technologies I already knew well.
  3. I was a student then and had plenty of free time.
  4. A [friend] was contributing to rustc, which inspired me.

When Rome forked into Biome, I was active around that transition and got invited to join the team. Since then, I’ve chipped in whenever I can—though I’ve also had fairly long inactive periods.

Lessons from Contributing to Biome

Through my Biome contributions, I learned that “making the first commit isn’t hard, but sustaining contributions over time is.” The core challenges are time, energy, and motivation. You have to overcome questions like:

  • Do you have enough energy after work or on weekends to write code?
  • Can you spend time on OSS instead of other side projects or hobbies?
  • Can you stay motivated and actually enjoy it?
  • If generative AI can solve issues for you, is there still value in doing OSS work?

Since OSS is voluntary, there are plenty of reasons to stop. But sticking with it brings its own rewards.

What You Gain from long-term OSS Involvement

Spot contributions are valuable, but long-term contributors are priceless. Here’s what you stand to gain by consistently working on OSS:

  • Intellectual curiosity
    You need genuine interest in the problems and code an OSS project tackles.

  • Ownership of the code
    Unlike closed-source work, you can take full ownership of your changes. If a refactor makes sense, you don’t need to justify your time to anyone.

  • Practical English skills
    Most OSS projects require English communication. Instead of translating docs or chats, you read and write English directly.

  • A community of like-minded collaborators
    You meet people who share your goals and spend precious free time on the same project—it’s inspiring.

  • Financial compensation
    Some OSS projects offer payment via sponsorships (check OpenCollective for project budgets). While few people do OSS for the money alone, it can be a strong motivator.

  • Conference speaking opportunities
    Sustained OSS involvement often leads to speaking gigs. For instance, I spoke at TSKaigi2024 and other events thanks to my OSS work. That visibility also helps with sponsorships and networking.

You might get some of these benefits from a single PR, but they compound over time.

Conclusion

People dive into OSS for all sorts of reasons—job requirements, curiosity, hobby, or career goals. A single commit is great, but ongoing contributions offer a deeper, more rewarding experience. If you find a project you care about, try sticking with it—you might be surprised how much you gain.

It takes time, energy, and motivation to keep going. In Biome, even when I was inactive, contributors like [ematipico], [Conaclos], and [Arend] kept the momentum, and more recently [Siketyan] has been very active as a committer from Japan.

I plan to be more consistent with my contributions. Many people around me have been doing OSS longer than I have—please share your experiences too.