Open Source Launchpad

Contributor wall

Everyone here made a pull request. For most of them it was the first one they had ever made.

Add yourself — this is the easiest first PR there is

Create one small file with your name in it. Instructions are below the wall. It takes about ten minutes, and you will have done every step of a real contribution.

Loading…

How to add yourself

Every contributor has their own file in the contributors/ folder. That is deliberate: because nobody shares a file, eighty people can add themselves at the same time and none of you will ever get a merge conflict.

  1. Fork and clone the repository

    git clone https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/open-source-launchpad.git
cd open-source-launchpad
git checkout -b feat/add-YOUR-USERNAME

  2. Copy the template

    Copy contributors/_TEMPLATE.json to contributors/your-github-username.json. Use your real GitHub username as the filename, all lowercase.

    cp contributors/_TEMPLATE.json contributors/your-username.json

  3. Fill it in

    {
  "github": "your-username",
  "name": "Your Name",
  "quote": "One line about you, or why you are here.",
  "interests": ["python", "design", "cybersecurity"],
  "first_contribution": "2026-10-05"
}

    github is the only required field. Keep quote under 100 characters and give at most four interests, or your card will not fit.

  4. Check your JSON is valid

    A single missing comma breaks the file, and CI will catch it. Check first:

    python3 -m json.tool contributors/your-username.json

    If it prints your file back, it is valid. If it prints an error, it tells you which line.

  5. Commit and push

    git add contributors/your-username.json
git commit -m "feat: add your-username to the contributor wall"
git push origin feat/add-YOUR-USERNAME

  6. Open the pull request

    Fill in the template. For this one specific PR you do not need a linked issue — adding yourself to the wall is the welcome task, not a tracked piece of work.

    Once it is merged, a GitHub Action rebuilds the wall automatically and your card appears here within a minute or two.

Do not edit contributors/index.json

That file is generated by a robot every time the wall changes. If you edit it by hand your change gets overwritten, and you will probably hit a merge conflict on the way. Only add your own file.

Why one file each?

If everyone added a line to a single shared list, the second person to be merged would hit a merge conflict, and the eightieth would hit seventy-nine of them. One file per person means Git never has to reconcile anything.

This is a real technique, not a teaching exercise. You will see the same pattern in changelog folders, Terraform modules, and Kubernetes configs anywhere a large team edits the same project.