Open source communities face significant difficulties as they grow, including—but not limited to—aging contributors, financial challenges, and overall sustainability issues. I proposed a workshop on sustaining and growing open source communities for the GNOME Asia Summit 2025 in Tokyo, and I’m happy to say the proposal was accepted. This was my first workshop on the topic, and I hope to host it again in the near future to continue supporting open source communities.
The workshop was a 60-minute session. I invited participants to form small groups to share insights about the communities they are involved in, discuss pain points, and brainstorm potential solutions. I also delivered a short presentation on sustaining and growing communities. In preparation, I created a pre-workshop survey to gather relevant data.
In my presentation, I highlighted several recent developments in open source project foundations aimed at addressing financial sustainability. I outlined key challenges and identified the main focus areas for the workshop: finance, people, and contributions. I shared a case study of how a local open source community successfully attracts and retains contributors. I also emphasized that financial allocation and effective project/community governance are critical factors for long-term sustainability and growth.
The pre-workshop survey revealed that respondents were uncertain and concerned about financial sustainability over the next 2–3 years.
After the group discussions, two groups—representing GNOME and OSPN Japan—presented their findings. Both focused primarily on people and contribution-related issues:
- Communication within the community is slow.
- Community structure is unclear.
- Project resources do not always align with the needs of local groups.
- Aging of community members.
- Difficulty bringing non-native speakers into local communities.
- Challenges in connecting city-level groups within a country.
The groups also brainstormed potential solutions:
- Organizing regular events targeted at broader communities in the country or city to encourage collaboration between cities and improve outreach.
- Increasing transparency about the community (e.g., clearer community structure, expected response times, and replying guidelines).
- Recruiting developers to build websites for communities and projects.
I was pleasantly surprised by how engaged the participants were—far more than I had anticipated. The workshop received very high reviews, exceeding my expectations by a wide margin.
I hope this workshop can be run again in the near future.
Slide: Workshop on Sustaining & Growing Open Source Communities (GNOME Asia Summit 2025)