Maintaining & Sustaining Software Intermediate 14m
Best Practices for Maintainers
Making your life easier as an open source maintainer, from documenting processes to leveraging your community.
Learning outcomes
- Document processes to reduce repetitive overhead as a maintainer
- Set and communicate expectations with contributors
- Use tools and automation to make maintenance sustainable
- Know when and how to say no to contributions or requests
- Leverage the community to share the maintainer workload
Prerequisites
Git
Cite this lesson
APA
GitHub (2026). Best Practices for Maintainers. UC OSPO Network. https://opensource.guide/best-practices/
BibTeX
@misc{best_practices_for_maintainers_2026,
author = {{GitHub}},
title = {Best Practices for Maintainers},
year = {2026},
publisher = {UC OSPO Network},
url = {https://opensource.guide/best-practices/}
}