I first heard about Hacktoberfest on a podcast a couple of months ago, and it sparked my interest since I've become more involved in open-source software projects lately. Hacktoberfest is a month-long event with the purpose of celebrating open-source software. The event is run by DigitalOcean and dev.to. Having lived in Munich for a couple of years, I, of course, find the name of the event amusing as well.

To participate, you need to sign up at hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com anytime between October 1 and October 31. Within the same time period, you need to submit at least four pull requests to public GitHub repositories. When you have done this, you will receive a Hacktoberfest T-shirt if you are one of the first 50,000 participants to successfully complete the Hacktoberfest challenge.

I think that this is an excellent event to promote open-source software, and I registered a few days ago. Once I got started, I was so inspired that I ended up creating more than double the amount of pull requests needed to receive the T-shirt.

My main focus was on abapOpenChecks, which is a GitHub repository providing open-source checks for SAP Code Inspector / ABAP Test Cockpit. I use this tool on a daily basis, so it feels great to be able to give back to the community of the project. I also created some minor pull requests for Kodboken.se, which is the educational material used by Kodcentrum where I'm volunteering as a coding instructor.

If you haven't previously contributed to open-source software, this is the perfect time to get started! If you are already an open-source veteran, why not contribute some more and potentially receive a cool T-shirt?

I wish you a great October and happy coding!

If you would like to comment on this post, please head over to LinkedIn.