Hacktoberfest 2023 is scheduled to be held from 1st October 2023 to 31st October 2023. Hacktoberfest is the biggest open-source one-month long event that is organized by DigitalOcean along with other sponsoring companies.

• Event: Hacktoberfest 2023
• Dates: 1st October 2023 to 31st October 2023
• Eligibility: Open to everyone
• Rules: Make 4 valid merged pull requests to participating repositories
• Winners: All participants with 4 valid merged pull requests
• Prizes: Exclusive DigitalOcean t-shirt + stickers for various companies

Once the program begins, you need to register at hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com.

We, OpenGenus, have been participating in Hacktoberfest since 2017 when Cosmos project by OpenGenus was the 3rd most contributed project worldwide. Be prepared for Hacktoberfest 2023.

Official Hacktoberfest Twitter account announcing Hacktoberfest 2023:

🎉 Celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Hacktoberfest with us! 🎉

Record a 5-15 sec video expressing your love for #Hacktoberfest or share what makes it special for you 🧡

More details here 🔗 https://t.co/AQfsxB5Fea#Hacktoberfest10 #OpenSource pic.twitter.com/cDPt8viSxZ

— DigitalOcean (@digitalocean) August 11, 2023

In short, if you register for this program, you will be rewarded for helping open-source projects. If your 4 pull requests are merged during this period, you will be rewarded with a t-shirt, stickers and other goodies.

NEW: This time you can release a video sharing your appreciation for Hacktoberfest and you can get featured. This is the form by DigitalOcean.

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Note that the rules/ guidelines for Hacktoberfest 2023 has not been declared officially but it is expected to be similar to previous year. Following are the guidelines based on Hacktoberfest 2022:

1. Rules of Hacktoberfest 2023
2. Steps to participate

Rules of Hacktoberfest 2023

Rules of Hacktoberfest 2023 are:

• Make valuable contributions. Simple contributions like editing text files or disruptive changes will be marked as "invalid" by Maintainer of the open-source project. If your merged pull request is marked as invalid, it will not count towards the 4 pull requests you need to complete.

• Only merged pull requests are considered for prizes. Make sure you address review comments and get your pull requests merged.

• Repositories participating in Hacktoberfest will have issues with tag "hacktoberfest". Check this at the issues page of the open-source project.

• Go through the guidelines and open issues of the project you want to contribute to. This is to ensure that the format of your pull requests are in line with Project goals.

• Once you complete 4 merged pull requests, you will receive an email from DigitalOcean with a form requesting your address and other details to deliver the prize.

• Depending on your location, you will receive your prize from Mid November 2023 to January end 2024. This contest is open worldwide.

Steps to participate

Note: If you are/ have been an Intern at OpenGenus, you can message your mentor in your Internship tracker directly to help you contribute at our projects at Hacktoberfest 2023.

Overall the steps are:

• Step 1: Get your local copy of our code
• Step 2: Learn to make a pull request
• Step 3: Make 1st Contribution
• Step 4: Make 2nd Contribution
• Step 5: Make 3rd Contribution
• Step 6: Make 4th Contribution

Step 1: Get your local copy of our code

To keep it simple, you may get started with Cosmos project by OpenGenus if you are interested in Algorithms and Data Structures or Computing concepts in general.

Steps:

• Go to our project code (github.com/opengenus/cosmos)
• Click on the fork button to create your own copy (github.com/<your_username>/cosmos)
• Explore the code for your fun

In fact, you can chose any project of your choice. Browse through other great projects at OpenGenus:

• Quark
• Cosmos Search

Step 2: Learn to make a pull request

You can go through this detailed guide to learn how to make a pull request:

Steps to create a pull request at GitHub

This year our focus is to maintain quality over quantity. So, one basic contribution so that you get acquainted with the process is fine.

We, strongly, suggest to take up good scope of contributions so that you learn new ideas over the course and

Step 3: Make 1st Contribution

As the first contribution, you can work on a simple contribution such as adding code for a specific algorithm/ data structure/ application, fix bugs in existing code and others.

For example:

Check this pull request Added Code for TSP using Branch & Bound #5887 by Abhijit Tripathy

Step 4: Make 2nd Contribution

In this step, you should read a random article at OpenGenus, understand the topic and prepare 10 questions to judge whether you understood it at a later point.

You need to document these 10 questions (with answers) as an article at OpenGenus and open a pull request to add the meta-data of the article and link at readme at Cosmos.

Check this pull request as a sample: Update global_metadata.json #5830 by Raksha

To get an invite, just comment under this thread/ article and you will receive an email invite to join OpenGenus IQ as an author in some time. The steps are as follows:

• You are added to our Hacktoberfest group
• On this, you will receive an invite through direct message on our forum from one of our maintainers.
• Once you have joined, you can login at iq.opengenus.org/ghost and get started with your article. This is our writing guidelines.
• Discuss and get your article reviewed.

Our Hacktoberfest group:

Step 5: Make 3rd Contribution

For the 2nd scope of contribution, you should write an article at OpenGenus IQ on a topic which you are already comfortable in. For example, if you have worked on coding a script recently, you can explain the process/ approach you took to develop it in an article.

We will make a pull request with a preview link to your article and add associated code (if available).

To make sure a topic is available, you can discuss with your mentor or make sure it is available by searching on Google like:

<topic> site:iq.opengenus.org

Some sample articles contributed:

• Chrome Dinosaur (T-Rex 🦖) game with Processing in Java by Priyanshi Sharma
• Minimum Bitwise OR operations to make any two array elements equal by Ishaan Ahuja

Step 6: Make 4th Contribution

For the 4th scope of contribution, you shall write an article at OpenGenus IQ on a topic that is new to you and is under your interest.

You can explore a research paper as well which can be challenging but will be interesting as well.

If you have any confusion, just let us know by opening a GitHub issue. We are here to help you get knowledge by contributing and in the process, get free goodies delivered at your doorstep.