24th Gulaschprogrammiernacht

So you've become a FOSS-Maintainer - Lessons learned from ~6 years of maintaining HedgeDoc
2026-06-05 , ZKM Medientheater
Language: English

Erik and Molly (among others) became HedgeDoc maintainers during the pandemic. They started a complete rewrite of the project almost immediately and learned FOSS maintenance the hard way. In this talk they'll present some lessons learned, so that others might have a better starting point.


Now that you are a FOSS maintainer (or are aiming to become one) several questions might come to your mind.

  • What's maintaining like?
  • What can I do to make my life easier?
  • How do I manage the community?
  • How do I keep the motivation high?
  • How can I prevent burnout?
  • What's the important stuff that suddenly needs to be handled?

We were at the same point, but after six years continuous maintenance of a reasonably big FOSS project, we've come to some answers that we'd like to share with you. Expect some honest answers, funny anecdotes and hard learned lessons.


Trigger Warning/Content Notes:

mental health

Molly is maintainer of HedgeDoc, a big fan of Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering and enjoys cooking.