Every serious open source project has a community around it. These communities vary greatly, from open and accepting to harsh and critical. I believe that community stewardship is a critical part of being a maintainer on an open source project, and I think Tracks has a really cool community.
For many of the Tracks contributors, it was/is our first Rails project. When we start out, we don’t always do things perfectly, but the community helps us along. I felt very welcome from the start, and it seemed like my contributions were appreciated. Now that I’m acting as a maintainer, I’m doing my best to maintain the same atmosphere as we get contributions from others. For example, somebody from Evergreen College just submitted a bunch of patches, including support for Central Authentication Service, a popular auth solution for higher education. It wasn’t perfect, but we’re going to make it better and include it! On the flip side, I just submitted a four-line patch to Limelight and had it ignored because there was no accompanying test. I understand Micah’s motivations, but he has just discouraged me from using Limelight on future projects. I want to keep Tracks’s community open and inviting, and accepting patches is a big part of that.
This semester I’ve contributed more to Tracks than ever before, and it’s been really great to get feedback from the community on it. All of the maintainers, and even some of the users, have sent glowing feedback and plenty of praise for my jQuery migration and other work. This kind of positive support is great for the project, and keeps people like me going. I feel lucky to be part of the Tracks community!
