---
authors: 1
caption: "We're saying thanks to our contributors and want to make sure their contributions get the credit they deserve"
date: '2021-11-28'
intro: 'During our last contributor call , we decided that we would implement the All Contributors specification as a way to honour all our contributors.'
title: 'Calling all contributors'
---

During [our last contributor
call](https://github.com/freesewing/freesewing/issues/1514), we decided that we
would implement the [All Contributors
specification](https://allcontributors.org/) as a way to honour all our
contributors.

<!-- truncate -->

If on the surface, a contributor call decision to honour contributors sounds
like some sort of self-serving nonsense, let me reassure you that there's no
risk of dislocated shoulders from patting ourselves on the back. Instead it's
about (also) honouring those contributions that tend to go overlooked in Open
Source.

The All Contributors website summerazes it as:

> This is a specification for recognizing contributors to an open source
> project in a way that rewards each and every contribution, not just code.
>
> People are giving themselves and their free time to contribute to open source
> projects in so many ways, so we believe everyone should be praised for their
> contributions (code or not).

When we talk about _contributors_ in open source projects, there is often the
assumption that this is all the people who contribute code to the project. The
fact the [GitHub lists the contributors of a project based on the actual
commits](https://github.com/freesewing/freesewing/graphs/contributors) goes a
long way to cement that view.

But there's plenty of contributions that fly under the radar of an automated
system based on the commit history. Things like documentation and blog posts,
community building, answering questions or submitting bug reports, are all
valuable contributions that deserve to be recognized.

By implementing the All Contributors specification, we pledge to give those
people credit for their contributions, and make that credit visible. In
practice the list of contributors will be included in the `README.md` file of
all our packages, as well as in the main `README.md` file of [our
`freesewing/freesewing` monorepo](https://github.com/freesewing/freesewing).

In the future, we also plan to make this list available on our website.

## How does it work?

Going forward, we will make an effort to add all contributors regardless of how
they contribute to the project. But we'd also like to capture contributions
that were made up until now.

For this, we need your help. If you've contributed to FreeSewing, let us know.
You can [let us know on Discord](https://discord.freesewing.org/), or you can
[create an
issue](https://github.com/freesewing/freesewing/issues/new?assignees=joostdecock&labels=%F0%9F%92%9C+all+contributors&template=all-contributors.md&title=All+Contributors%3A+Please+add+%28username+here%29),
or you can comment on [any
issue](https://github.com/freesewing/freesewing/issues) or [pull
request](https://github.com/freesewing/freesewing/pulls) using [the
instructions for the all-contributors
bot](https://allcontributors.org/docs/en/bot/usage).

Don't be shy, add yourself :)
