Mid-October Hacktoberfest update

It's the middle of October and more than time for an update on how Hacktoberfest is going at Meilisearch.

Shared objectives update

As mentioned when Hacktoberfest started, we're setting shared objectives that will benefit everyone. Upon reaching each objective, we will contribute to a few organizations or support people we think are doing great work.

Open-source maintainers

We chose open-source for our project to share a high-quality search solution, accessible to all, no matter their financial means. Sharing is the basis of what we do. Meilisearch and milli (Meilisearch's core engine) have many dependencies, and most of them are other open-source projects. Their maintainers are not all part of large companies. By supporting some of these maintainers, we're contributing to open source and helping these developers to improve the projects we depend on.

These developers are the primary maintainers of:

• rust-sipash - maintainer
• vergen - maintainer
• pin-project - maintainer

Climate activists

We are aware that Meilisearch has an impact on our planet. We use servers, large datasets, computational power, all of which contribute to global warming. This is something we are not comfortable with, but it is an unavoidable aspect of being a tech company.

That's why we will support three organizations tackling the challenges of climate change:

• WWF
• Surfriders Foundation Europe
• Reforest'Action

Organizations that promote diversity in tech

Meilisearch grows thanks to each team member's personality, skills, and experience. Having different perspectives in organizations leads to better decisions and is the only way to build a long-lasting company.

We will support three organizations that strive for diversity and inclusivity in software engineering:

• Black Girls Code
• Out in Tech
• Techfugees

How to unlock the perks?

There are three stages. We will collectively reach them if the number of contributions to Meilisearch open-source repositories is high enough. Each stage will unlock a larger amount of money for these three groups we want to support.

To get the total number of contributions, we will sum up the number of Hacktoberfest-related Pull Requests (PRs) merged in Meilisearch repositories at the end of the month. And we will add the last PRs not yet merged, but tagged with the hacktoberfest-accepted label.

In 2020, we had 49 PRs merged during Hacktoberfest.
This year, every 49 PRs merged, we will reach a new stage and add 500€ to the financial support of each of the three groups.

We are already tracking the number of contributions: on October 20th, we had 114 PRs merged since the beginning of Hacktoberfest. Stage 1 & 2 have already been reached 🎉. We'll find a stretch goal later if we're able to reach stage 3 🤞.

A new way to contribute: Awesome Meilisearch

To help you reach these stages, we're adding a new way to increase the number of contributions. You will still have to get a PR merged, but this PR does not have to close an issue.

We recently created the awesome-meilisearch repository. It contains a curated list of awesome Meilisearch resources, based on the awesome list template.You can contribute to Meilisearch's Hacktoberfest goals by adding new resources to this repository. These resources have to be links to awesome blog posts, tutorials, demos, guides, talks, or just about anything else that teaches people how to do cool things with Meilisearch.

All accepted contributions qualify for the shared goals count!

We're counting on you!

Consider keeping on contributing to Meilisearch repositories once you have successfully participated in Hacktoberfest. If you increase the number of merged PRs, you will help unlock new perks that benefit everyone.