Why I decided to accept Matt Mullenweg’s 5% rule

We live in a world, where open source software powers the Internet. We read sites, we use services, we develop and we make business – all using that free lines of codes. Personally I most of my time am in the WordPress and BuddyPress worlds, creating bridges between them, or removing them.

BuddyPress is that plugin that I’m familiar with from 2008, when Andy Peatling still worked with revisions 500+. I tweaked it, helped test and fix some issues, translated it into Russian – and I’m still doing all that things, 6 full years already, with more or less involvement over time.

But it took me a while to understand, that contributing to BuddyPress is not only good for community in general, but for my business and the whole BuddyPress ecosystem too. That’s why I made such decision:

I promise to spend at least several hours per week submitting patches for #BuddyPress to help core devs make v2.2 even more awesome.

— Slava Abakumov (@slaFFik) November 16, 2014

I totally accept what that will cost me – mainly time, but taking into account what Matt Mullenweg said in his post “Five for the Future”, I decided to invest 5%-10% of my week working hours into the BuddyPress improvement. Tough, but exciting.

Ovirium is not that big as 10up, or Code for the People, or WPMUDev – but taking this challenge will not only make us learn something new, but mainly will also give ability to thank core developers and lots of other people, that made BuddyPress such an awesome plugin. And taking this challenge is completely not about the company size – but the vision of the future, and investment into the ecosystem.

• You contribute to BuddyPress
• BuddyPress becoming better
• More users enjoyed and involved into using it
• More clients appear with more ideas to improve BuddyPress further
• You contribute…

Huge amount of companies and developers rely on and depend on open source software – so why not then contributing back to make everyone’s future at least a little bit better?