How did you get involved with Open Source?
My name is Daniele Scasciafratte, and I started contributing to Open Source projects over ten years ago. My journey began in 2013 with Mozilla and in 2015 with WordPress, where I took on various roles and participated in different activities.
At Mozilla as an example, I was part of the Mozilla Reps council for two years and contributed to numerous projects, from community management to development. My name is listed in the about:credits section of Firefox and on the monuments outside their San Francisco office.
For WordPress instead, I was a core contributor for years, co-organizer of various meetups, speaker, and localizer.
From december 2020 to april 2025 I had an Italian weekly podcast about Open Source and technology (200~ episodes in 4 years).
Now I am focusing on other projects and communities, internet is changed but also the open source world.
What’s Open Source to you?
To me, it is a way to extend human knowledge and what the world can offer to the people. This means that you need to learn how to talk with people and relate with them to create a real Open Source project. The effect that open source can have to the world but at same time to your career is something difficult to see in the world of non-profit voluntary activities.
What projects are you involved in?
Currently, I am serving my second term on the council of the Italian Linux Society and am part of the maintainer group for the Amber language.
Additionally, I have written a free and Open Source book titled “Contribute to Open Source the Right Way,” available here, and I am working on the fourth edition.
How do you grow your community?
Growing a community depends on the project’s topic and the type of contributors you want to attract, whether they are developers, localizers, etc.
It’s not easy, which is why I wrote the book. In my experience, the activities you offer to the community and the promotion/evangelism around them make the difference. So the first step is how we can transform the project to be more community friendly but also more easy for a new comer to contribute? In this way we improve also the brand awareness and the project quality in a single (not tiny) task.
What are the main challenges you face as a maintainer?
Keeping up with everything alone is not easy, and it’s important to build a team to focus on different aspects with people you can trust.
Time management is crucial, as you need to handle many things alone or with others and learn how to “bother” people based on their time zones.
What are some ways contributors can better support maintainers?
In my book, I suggest that users and contributors take the first step to help a project by communicating with it. It’s a learning curve that, once started, can only grow.
No one needs complains, everyone needs a feedback with suggestions about how to improve it.
What’s the impact of AI on Open Source development?
AI can be a great support in Open Source development, but you can’t blindly trust what it generates. It can help automate repetitive tasks, review code, and manage issues, but with code you can’t thrust them.
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