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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteSoftware projects last when maintaining them is treated as a shared responsibility—not an endless stream of unpaid work for a few experts. In a 2023 Linux Foundation article based on interviews with 32 “Super Maintainers,” people working on projects including PostgreSQL, JavaScript, Storybook, Julia, Rust, and PyTorch described practical ways to grow contributors, strengthen governance, improve documentation, fund maintenance, prepare successors, and prevent burnout.
What the interviews reveal
The Linux Foundation’s article, published 10 August 2023, draws on interviews with maintainers of widely used projects on which many people and organizations depend. A separate Linux Foundation Research page says the interview project collected 41 practices. These are reported experiences and recommendations, not a controlled comparison showing that one practice guarantees a project’s success.
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The common thread is that technical quality alone does not sustain software. Projects also need processes that help people join, understand how decisions are made, find reliable guidance, and share the work over time.
Grow contributors through personal, clear onboarding
People are more likely to contribute when a project makes the first steps approachable and gives them a real connection to its community. Interviewees recommended personal engagement, inclusive communication across multiple channels, clear onboarding, and starter tasks that fit a newcomer’s skills.
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Norbert De Langen described one concrete example from Storybook: during its first year, he met more than 200 people after sending meeting links to people who contacted him with suggestions or questions. He estimated that nearly 20% later became repeat contributors, including core contributors. Those figures are his estimates as reported by the Linux Foundation in 2023, not a measured conversion rate that should be expected of other projects.
Make the first contribution legible
- Explain how to set up the project, propose a change, and get feedback.
- Identify tasks suitable for newcomers and describe what a useful contribution looks like.
- Respond to questions and submissions promptly enough that contributors know what to do next.
- Use communication channels that welcome different working styles and levels of experience.
Onboarding is not finished when someone submits a first patch. A project should make it possible for occasional contributors to understand how to take on more responsibility, while respecting that not everyone wants to become a maintainer.
Use governance to make participation sustainable
Governance determines how decisions are made, how disagreements are handled, and whether authority is concentrated in a way the community can trust. The Linux Foundation article says interviewees emphasized codes of conduct, civility, decentralized power, and neutral community management. It reports that all interviewees agreed on the essential nature of community governance for a project’s longevity.
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A code of conduct gives people a shared basis for addressing unacceptable behavior; it is most useful when the project also has a credible way to apply it. Decentralized decision-making can reduce dependence on one person, while neutral community management can help keep conflicts from turning into personal contests for control. The aim is not process for its own sake: it is a community where people can contribute and disagree without making the project depend on informal access to a single maintainer.
Treat documentation as infrastructure
Documentation helps users operate software and helps contributors understand how to change it. The Linux Foundation article reports that maintainers unanimously wanted better documentation. Interviewees recommended dedicated coordination and simpler contribution processes.
That makes documentation part of the project’s maintenance work, not a finishing touch to be deferred until after code. If setup instructions, contribution guidance, or project decisions are hard to find, existing maintainers may repeatedly answer the same questions and new contributors may struggle to get started. Coordinating documentation work and making its contribution path clear can spread that load.
Fund maintenance, not just new features
Many maintainers in the interviews described funding as inadequate. Some sought employment at organizations supportive of their projects; independent maintainers expressed concern about sustaining work without major backers. The Linux Foundation Research page includes regular funding sources among its 41 collected practices.
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For an organization that relies on open-source software, this is a direct operational concern: using a dependency creates exposure to its maintenance capacity, even when no support contract exists. Support can mean providing maintainers time to work, contributing money through an appropriate channel, or making engineering contributions that the project can review and sustain. The right route depends on the project; the interview findings do not establish a universal funding model.
Make mentorship and succession explicit
A project that relies on one person’s knowledge has a continuity risk even if that person is highly capable. The article recommends identifying and nurturing potential successors, and points to LFX Mentorship as a program intended to cultivate new maintainers.
Mentorship works best when it develops both technical judgment and knowledge of how the project operates: its decision-making, review expectations, release responsibilities, and community norms. Sharing those responsibilities over time gives future maintainers a path to grow into the role instead of leaving the project to improvise when someone steps away.
Prevent burnout by changing the work, not just the worker
The maintainers’ recommendations pair personal boundaries with changes to project operations: balance personal and professional life, limit unpaid administration, automate repetitive processes, set boundaries, and take breaks. These approaches address different sources of strain. A break can provide recovery; automation can reduce recurring toil; boundaries can prevent an open-ended stream of requests from consuming all available time.
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Projects can put that advice into practice by identifying repetitive tasks that are safe to automate and by making responsibilities visible enough to share. Automation should reduce routine effort, not create a new, unowned system that only one maintainer knows how to repair. Similarly, asking maintainers to take breaks is not a substitute for reducing unsustainable workloads.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What organizations that depend on open source can do
Organizations can treat project health as part of dependency management rather than assuming popular software will maintain itself. The Linux Foundation interviews point toward concrete areas to examine:
- Contributor access: Can a new person find the contribution process and get a useful response?
- Governance: Are decision-making and community expectations understandable, with power and moderation responsibilities distributed appropriately?
- Documentation: Can users and contributors find reliable guidance without relying on private explanations?
- Maintenance capacity: Is there a dependable way to resource ongoing maintenance, rather than only feature work?
- Continuity: Are knowledge, review responsibilities, and leadership being shared with potential successors?
- Security readiness: Does the project have enough capacity and engagement to address security work as well as ordinary maintenance?
Security is an adjacent part of the same sustainability problem. OpenSSF uses Log4Shell to illustrate how critical infrastructure can depend on small maintainer teams, and describes Scorecard, Sigstore, SLSA, working groups, contributions, and Alpha-Omega funding as engagement routes. These are examples of security-related ways to participate, not interchangeable solutions or guarantees; organizations should check current program details before relying on them.
The durable lesson: preserve institutional knowledge
Maintainers do more than merge code. They accumulate the context that helps a project make sound decisions and continue operating when people, priorities, and circumstances change. The Linux Foundation article concludes: “The most valuable resource any maintainer can ever attain, or share is the institutional knowledge built up in their project and their experience.”
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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11Growing contributors, documenting decisions, distributing authority, funding routine work, mentoring successors, and reducing burnout all help that knowledge become a community asset rather than a single person’s private burden.
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