🚀 FOSDEM Open-Source Hackathon 2025: Celebrating Open-Source Contributions
📢 Overview
Join us for a community-driven hackathon celebrating contributions to open-source projects! Whether you’re fixing bugs, improving documentation, building new features, or tackling governance challenges, this hackathon is all about collaboration, learning, and impact.
You can propose solutions to pressing open-source challenges or contribute to any open-source project of your choice. Work individually or in teams, with the flexibility to participate remotely while engaging with the FOSDEM community.
🏆 Challenge Scope
You can choose from the following tracks:
- General Open-Source Contributions – Contribute to any open-source project.
- Governance & Open-Source Sustainability Challenges – Solve challenges related to how open-source projects are maintained and managed.
- Add your challenge...
🚀 Want to Add Your Own Challenge?
If you are an open-source project and want to propose a challenge, follow these steps:
- Join Mintycode and follow the set up guide: join Mintycode
- Create bounty and add "FOSDEM Bounty" to the challenge title.
- Provide a short description and expected outcome.
- Publish your challenge details.
We’ll review and list it as part of the hackathon challenges!
Your work must be publicly available on GitHub or another open-source platform under an open-source license.
📅 Hackathon Dates: 1st–7th February (Starts during FOSDEM!)
Each bounty may have a different timeline—please check individual challenges for details.
📝 How to Participate
- Register – Create Mintycode account: join Mintycode
- Join Mintycode Ecosystem - join Mintycode
- Choose a Project – Work on an existing open-source project or select a governance challenge from our list below.
- Start Hacking – Work on your contribution throughout the event, engage with project maintainers where possible, and collaborate with other participants.
- Submit Your Work – Submit your contribution.
- Demo & Wrap-Up – Showcasing what you built or improved.
📜 Hackathon Rules
✅ Contributions must be made during the hackathon period (1st–7th February).
✅ Work must be open-source and publicly accessible.
✅ Respect the code of conduct – be inclusive, collaborative, and respectful.
✅ If working in a team, all members must be credited.
✅ Plagiarism is strictly prohibited—your work must be original or properly credited if based on existing work.
✅ Follow the contribution guidelines of the respective open-source project.
📤 Submission Guide
🕒 Deadline: Each challenge has its own deadline—please check the details!
🔗 How to Submit:
- Provide a link to your code
- Include a short write-up (max 500 words) explaining your contribution
- (Optional) Add screenshots or short demo video (max 3 minutes) showcasing your work
🎉 Winner Announcement & Virtual Showcase Event
🏆 How winners will be announced:
On 7th February, we will host a virtual showcase event where participants will have the opportunity to present their solutions.
🗳️ Community Voting:
- Participants and attendees will vote for the best open-source challenge solution based on impact, innovation, and execution.
🎯 Bounty Challenge Judging:
- Bounty-specific challenges will be evaluated by project maintainers or sponsors based on predefined criteria described in bounty.
This is an exciting opportunity to showcase your work, receive recognition, and connect with the open-source community!
🔎 Featured Governance Challenges
These challenges focus on the long-term sustainability and governance of open-source projects.
1️⃣ AI-Powered Open-Source Maintainer Workload Balancer
🔍 Problem: Open-source maintainers often experience burnout due to an uneven workload. 💡 Challenge: Build an AI-driven workload distribution tool that helps distribute tasks more fairly. 🎯 Ideas:
- Use AI to analyze maintainer availability and past workload.
- Suggest task assignments based on expertise and activity levels.
- Notify maintainers when they are taking on too much work.
2️⃣ Automating Open-Source Decision-Making
🔍 Problem: Many open-source projects rely on informal or inefficient governance models, leading to bottlenecks in decision-making.
💡 Challenge: Build a governance automation tool that helps maintainers make transparent and fair decisions.
🎯 Ideas:
- Implement voting mechanisms
- Automate contributor consensus tracking
- Provide a governance dashboard with decision logs
3️⃣ AI-Driven Contributor Recognition & Reputation System
🔍 Problem: Open-source contributors do not always get proper recognition beyond GitHub stars or commit history.
💡 Challenge: Develop an AI-driven contributor ranking system based on meaningful engagement.
🎯 Ideas:
- Evaluate code quality, issue resolution, and documentation contributions.
- Detect and highlight mentorship & community support efforts.
- Provide leaderboards or badges based on contributions.
🎉 Recognition & Community Engagement
This is an informal, community-driven event, but outstanding contributions may be:
🏅 Featured in a post-event showcase
📢 Recognized within the open-source community
🌍 Connected with maintainers who can merge and build on your work
The primary goal is to support open-source projects, learn, and connect with like-minded developers!
💡 Got questions? Reach out at contact@mintycode.io.
🚀 Happy Hacking & See You at FOSDEM! 🚀