A Month for the People Behind the Code

Open source software underpins much of modern technology, but the maintainers who keep those projects alive often work with little recognition and limited support. Maintainer Month, running throughout June 2022, aims to change that by creating a dedicated period for the community to come together, share experiences, and highlight the challenges and rewards of project maintenance.

The initiative is itself an open source project, inviting organizations, companies, and individuals to contribute their own events and resources. Those interested in participating can submit a pull request to the Maintainer Month GitHub repository to have their activity added to the official calendar.

Virtual Events and Working Groups

The schedule features a range of virtual gatherings in different formats and languages, from regional meetups to technical deep dives. Highlights from the June lineup include:

  • June 2 — Meetup: GitHub Presente! : Em Português — A space for open source maintainers to meet, share, and be recognized, conducted in Portuguese.
  • June 7 — Conference: Tidelift Upstream — A free, fully virtual conference connecting application developers, project maintainers, and others invested in the sustainability of open source work.
  • June 17 — Stream: Time Travel Debugger for Web Development — A session with Community Lead Cecilia Martinez on using Replay, a screen recorder designed to help identify and debug issues in web applications.
  • June 17 — Working Group: Burnout and Mental Health in Open Source — An interactive session hosted by CHAOSS to explore how maintainers cope with burnout and how to facilitate discussions about mental health within open source communities.

The full list of activities is available on the Maintainer Month schedule, and organizers can add their own events by submitting a pull request to the site repository.

Year-Round Resources for Maintainers

Beyond the June events, the project curates a library of resources designed to support maintainers throughout the year. The collection spans practical guides, research reports, and funding opportunities, including:

Maintainers and community members who have a resource worth sharing can add it to the library via pull request.