Open Source Community Building

I’ve been reflecting on my conversation with Nader Dabit currently building developer communities at Eigen Labs, and formerly with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and The Graph. What struck me most was how many of his insights we have been actively applying while building the developer + founder community at soonami.io GmbH. Here are the top takeaways I’ve been leaning on 👇 1/ Building a developer community is a marathon, not a sprint. Developers want to go where there’s traction, but traction doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, trust, and a lot of value creation. 2/ Transparency builds trust. Be open about the trade-offs of your platform. No tech is perfect. Developers appreciate honesty over hype. If they know what they’re working with, they can make informed decisions. 3/ Help developers whether they use your product or not. The best DevRel teams provide value beyond their own ecosystem. Answer questions, share knowledge, and be part of the broader developer journey. This goodwill always comes back. 4/ Meet developers where they are. Not every developer is hanging out on Twitter. Find them in Discord, Telegram, GitHub, hackathons, or niche forums. Engage where they feel comfortable, not where it's easiest for you. 5/ Hackathons: Not just about numbers, but long-term impact. Instead of attracting bounty hunters who leave after a quick win, structure your hackathons to support serious builders. Offer milestone-based funding, mentorship, and ecosystem support. 6/ Long-term DevRel isn’t about short-term metrics. It's not just about tracking engagement. It’s about relationship-building over months (or years). DevRel should create a ripple effect—one great project inspires others. 7/ Cross-functional collaboration is key. Building a developer community isn’t just a DevRel task. Marketing, engineering, and leadership must align to provide the best support for developers. 8/ One strong builder > 100 inactive users. It’s not about quantity. Even if just one project from your hackathon or community scales, it can change the entire ecosystem. 9/ Want to break into DevRel? Here’s Nader’s advice: 🔹 Deeply understand the product 🔹 Build relationships with internal teams 🔹 Focus on providing genuine value 10/ Final takeaway: Developer communities thrive on authenticity, support, and long-term thinking. It’s not about pushing a product, it’s about empowering people to build. What’s your biggest takeaway from this? Let’s discuss! 

Community ≠ democracy. I see this misconception all the time in open source. People think being “community-driven” means every decision gets put to a vote. That’s not how good products get built. At Directus, we try to be obsessively transparent. We discuss major decisions openly (like our license change a few years ago), and genuinely listen to feedback. But at the end of the day? Someone has to make the final call. Here’s what I’ve learned: + Communities are great at identifying problems, terrible at prioritizing solutions + The loudest voices aren’t always representative of your user base + Sometimes you have to say no to popular requests that would hurt the product long-term + Vision requires direction, not consensus Apparently this is called “benevolent dictatorship”... and honestly, it works. I’d rather disappoint 100 vocal users today than build something that disappoints 10,000 quiet users tomorrow. The best community-driven projects have strong leadership that knows when to listen and when to lead. Steve Jobs didn’t focus group the iPhone. He knew that “design by committee” often results in bland, uninspired projects but real innovation requires bold choices and stark contrasts. As that famous Henry Ford quote goes: "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse." Sometimes the most community-friendly thing you can do is make the hard decisions yourself.

On my way to Qualcomm HQ to give a talk to their GTM team! Was asked to come and share learnings from building Jam, excited! 😃 Here is my talk, 9 steps any team can follow to build a user community: Every weekday, a Jam is created or debugged every 2 seconds! It's used by 165k builders, and this year we've hosted 2,000 devs at our community events and sponsored meetups for 5,300 builders. Here's how we built the community at Jam! In 9 steps ↓ 1/ Meet your users 1-1! A community is just a network of relationships. Start by building real 1-1 relationships. In the beginning, it's just getting to know people. Over time, this will start to look like community. 2/ Share who you are too! Communities are built through real connections between people – not brands. Share as real people behind the company. Show the human moments. "Building in public" so to speak 3/ Build with your users Because community is about doing things together It can be small – like: sending the person who created the 3 millionth Jam a handwritten note from the team! Or like how The Browser Company has a credits page to thank their early users by name. 4/ Host some events! Once you start to know enough users, invite them out to something! We host: AI Demos, Tech Talks, Hack Nights and Keynote Watch Parties It's so fun to meet users IRL, we've made some really awesome friendships this way 😍 5/ When you do host the event, make it something you'd have fun going to! Like – when speakers go over time, we catch them in a giant net like a bug! Or like – tell everyone to reach under their seat to get an AI generated car! 6/ Build real connections. Don't break trust by treating your community as leads or overly selling. Be a person, not a corporate representative. 7/ Always be in service of helping devs build Great communities are where people help people 8/ Celebrate the builders in the community! Great communities support each other What devs build is amazing, let's celebrate it! 🎉 9/ Give back however makes sense! Like, through open source tools or starter pack deals for devs. Or Pauline P. Narvas at Vercel runs an awesome job board in their community forum Building a dev community is really hard because it goes against a company's instincts: ❌ You can't measure ROI ❌ You can't overly sell into it ❌ High effort doing things that don't scale like office hours and irl events But it's the joy of building. Supporting devs is one of the coolest perks of building for them. In today's world by software, devs are the people bringing the future forward. It's awesome! Thanks Qualcomm for having me, flight is landing soon and can't wait to meet y'all and share the lessons from building Jam.dev!

Going open-source teaches you one uncomfortable truth: you can’t fake momentum anymore. When your code is public, your pace is public. Your silence is visible. Your ideas are auditable. That pressure makes you a different kind of builder. You stop creating features with hacks You stop selling vision slides and start shipping clarity. Because every PR, every issue comment, every contributor is a tiny mirror asking: are you building something people care about? Most people think open-source is about free access. It’s not. It’s about shared ownership. Once your roadmap lives in public, users stop being customers and start being collaborators. They don’t just use your product. They shape it, challenge it, and keep it honest. At Flexprice, a community thread recently broke our neat mental model on credit prioritization. Another surfaced a rollover cap edge case we didn't tested for a while. We shipped the fixes within 48 hours and added our learning into the product, docs, and examples but important is this cycle!! What keeps momentum real for us: - Public roadmap with decision logs, not just feature lists - Clear issue templates and sample data so contributors can reproduce and act fast Flexprice wouldn’t be half as good without that friction. That’s the real gift of open-source and not just community, but "calibration". If you’re building in the open, what ritual keeps your repo honest?

Just took a huge leap of faith and open-sourced our codebase! 🚀 It's been a wild ride, and I want to share why we made this decision. Three years ago, we were struggling to gain traction in the crowded access gateway space. Our tool was the #1 product by far, but adoption was slow. We knew we had to do something drastic. That's when it hit us – what if we embraced radical transparency? We spent months debating, planning, and frankly, sweating over the implications. But last week, we finally pulled the last trigger. It started with a free SaaS plan, then free self-hosted, free open-binary, and now, we're also open-source! Here's why we believe this is a game-changer: • Community-driven innovation: By opening our codebase, we're tapping into the collective genius of developers worldwide. The improvements and new features that have already poured in are mind-blowing! 🤯 • Trust and credibility: In an era of data breaches and privacy concerns, showing our cards builds instant trust. Customers can see exactly what they're getting. • Faster bug fixes: More eyes on the code mean quicker identification and resolution of issues. Our response time has already improved by 40%! • Talent attraction: Top developers want to work on exciting, open projects. • Ecosystem growth: Third-party integrations and plugins are flourishing, expanding our tool's capabilities beyond what we ever imagined. Of course, it hasn't all been smooth sailing. We've had to adapt our business model, breakdown features and paywall our unique value props. But the energy and momentum we've gained far outweigh the challenges. And the surprising outcome: the features in the open-source package beat enterprise plans of all competitors. To my fellow tech leaders: consider the power of openness. It's scary, yes. But the potential for growth and innovation is enormous. Have you experimented with open-sourcing in your company? What were your experiences? Let's discuss in the comments!

Everyone has a developer community. However, specific strategies that move the needle in developer community growth are too many. Here are the things that have worked in my experience: 🎯 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 & 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁:  1. Allocate $200-300/month for giveaways and activities to boost community activity  2. Create regular content cadence (use cases, tutorials, features)  3. Cross-post to Slack and content aggregators  4. Build champion programs (we had 10 advocates producing quarterly content) 🤝 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗧𝗼𝘂𝗰𝗵 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀:  1. Ditch the robotic Slackbot welcomes  2. Use tools like Commonroom for personalized founder/DevRel invites  3. A/B tested this approach and saw massive engagement improvements 📈 𝗘𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗺 & 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗯𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻:  1. Keynotes at targeted conferences  2. Content on major platforms (FreeCodeCamp, DZone)  3. Host local meetups, hackathons and platform chapters ( Great communities create contributors, champions, AND business results. The hackathons and meetups didn't just grow our community they built partnerships and drove real product evaluation. ) The Real Challenge: Sometimes, it's not just product adoption, it's changing the narrative around your domain. For example, with VMware, they had to go through that wave to move to virtualization. Identifying these problems and providing value is the key to the game.  What's your biggest community building challenge? Let's discuss! 💬

🇯🇵 What Japan’s Open Source Journey Teaches the World 🇯🇵 Over three decades, Japan built a uniquely steady and consensus-driven open source ecosystem, from early Linux experiments in universities to leadership in automotive, AI, and digital infrastructure. I’ve summarized 8 key lessons from that journey, along with practical steps other countries can take: 1. Government coordination works when it is focused and sustained 2. Start with reuse and procurement, then build contribution pathways 3. Treat compliance and licensing as an enabler 4. Invest in translation and developer onboarding 5. Incentivize corporate contributions through clear ROI models 6. Build local governance and cross-sector fora early 7. Link modernization objectives to open source strategy 8. Measure impact Each of these lessons comes with actionable guidance on how to translate open source principles into national and industrial capability (figure 👇). I’ll share the full report soon. If you're interested in having an early preview, please DM me. // UPDATED 10/23/2025: The report is now available via https://lnkd.in/dAdwHdpS // #OpenSource #DigitalSovereignty #TechnologyPolicy #OpenSourceStrategy #OSPO cc: Linux Foundation Japan TODO (OSPO) Group

At OpenSauced, one of the things I looked at as a metric for success was a contributor’s journey from just curious to contributor for our app repo. Part of making that path clear for contributors meant building an infrastructure to support it: - A Learn repo for early contributions and maintainers - A clear ladder to more complex work, from docs to code - A team mindset that encouraged growth and support Open source doesn’t have to be sink or swim. You can guide people and design for momentum. I've always been inspired by the Astro team, and not just how many people progressed through their contributor ladder, but their thoughtfulness in creating that path and the positive response I've heard from every contributor I talked to. It takes deliberate thoughtfulness to build that, but it pays off with decreased turnover, increased word-of-mouth marketing, feedback from invested contributors. What other projects have great contributor ladders? #opensource #onboarding #contributorexperience

What happens when you open-source a tool you built for yourself? 10,000+ developers started using it. I created n8n-MCP - a tool that enables AI Agents such as Claude Desktop or Cursor to actually build working n8n workflows. I simply wanted to solve my own problem. The decision to share it publicly led to something I never expected. 🌍 The numbers tell an interesting story: • Docker images downloaded 10.1k times • npx installations: 4.6k • Repository cloned 2.6k times by 1.7k unique developers • Nearly 40k views, averaging 3k unique visitors daily • 1.7k GitHub stars ⭐ • 4 independent creators discovered the tool and created YT tutorials But beyond metrics, what truly amazes me is how the community adapted the tool for their own needs. From solo developers running local instances to entire teams deploying it remotely, each found their own use case. The tool is valued as "the first one that actually works" and "best on the market" The experience taught me a valuable, yet obvious lesson. When you have deep knowledge in certain domain and solve well particular pain point in this domain, we often solve problems we didn't know others had too. 💡 Open source isn't just about code - it's about creating tools that multiply possibilities across the community. Sometimes the most impactful contributions come from simply scratching your own itch and having the courage to share it. Have you tried it yet?

I believe that building a community is a lot like building a product. You begin by defining your audience and gaining a deep understanding of their behaviors and problems. This foundation allows you to determine the value you will bring to them, ensuring that your community is centered around the needs, behaviours and desires of your members. I'm excited to share our Practical Guide to Community Building, created based on conversations with top community builders from Miro, Canva, and Butter 🧈 in Community Unlocked podcast. This guide gathers numerous insights and strategies to help you build and grow your community effectively. Here are five core principles to guide you in building a thriving community: 📌 Start with a Core Purpose: Clearly define why your community exists. Understanding your purpose helps align your efforts and ensures that your community meets its members' needs. 📌 Foster Organic Growth: Create a welcoming space that encourages participation. Facilitate easy interaction and inclusivity to make members feel at home and engaged. 📌 Implement Strategic Engagement: Set clear objectives and leverage feedback loops to shape the community and your product. Engage with members actively and listen to their insights. 📌 Cultivate Advocacy and Leadership: Identify and support ambassadors within your community. Provide them with roles and recognition to foster their growth and strengthen the community. 📌 Prioritize Authenticity and Transparency: Ensure your community reflects genuine values and maintain open communication. Transparency builds trust and deepens connections with your members. I and Helena Brandist explore these principles and more in our Community Unlocked podcast series. Follow us for more insights and tips on building successful communities. Join the conversation and let's build thriving communities together! Read full guide here - https://lnkd.in/eVEXmZYk