Celebrate open source this October by participating in the fourth annual Hacktoberfest, a month-long celebration of open source software in partnership with DigitalOcean.

Last year, contributors from 114 countries submitted over 90,000 pull requests to all kinds of projects—everything from documentation tweaks and bug fixes to new features and performance improvements.

Some incredibly welcoming communities and projects like Home Assistant, the open source home automation platform, saw over five hundred contributions throughout the month. Some first time-contributors continued on projects and have gone on to become regular contributors and maintainers.

Home Assistant Hacktoberfest Tweet

Whether it’s your first or four-hundredth contribution, we think everyone can get something out of Hacktoberfest—the thrill of committing to open source or the rush that comes with your first merged pull request, for example.

@AlexandraABowen Hacktoberfest Tweet

If that’s not enough, consider the free limited-edition t-shirt you’ll receive when you make four valid pull requests! Please visit the Hacktoberfest website for full details.

Free Hacktoberfest 2017 T-shirt for completing four pull requests

Connect with other participants, show the world your contributions, or just show off your new shirt with the #hacktoberfest hashtag on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. We love hearing about your first open source contributions 🎉

Don’t know where to start? If you’ve got the skills and a little free time this October, there’s an open source project that could use your help.

To participate, simply open a pull request and contribute to any open source project during the month of October. Fix a bug, add a feature, or even improve some documentation. You can find projects that need your help by searching the hacktoberfest label and filtering for your programming language of choice.

Learn more from the Hacktoberfest website

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