This week on The Business of Open Source I talked with Alya Abbott, COO of Zulip, about managing community contributors. This is a hot topic for open source companies — and for that matter, open source projects in general, including those that aren’t being monetized in any way. It’s a bit of a third rail in the open source ecosystem to suggest that there’s a downside to community contributions, but there undoubtably is. 

At Zulip, they think about the contribution process as a product. They think about the contributor experience and making it as easy as possible for new contributors to get started. They even did user experience testing on the developer experience for contributors — and made changes as a result. 

And why does this even matter? Because when it’s done right, community contributors can end up increasing your development velocity. Especially on things like integrations, the community contributors can really push things forward. 

There’s much more to this episode, so check it out! And if you’d like more content about open source companies, or if you’re the leader of an open source company, join the mailing list for Open Source Founders Summit.