Running an open source project is more than just writing code. Jussi Pakkanen says “…most of all work has to do with something else,” which if you listen to The Changelog, our Maintainer Spotlight series, or Request for Commits then you know this all too well.

This places additional requirements to project maintainers that are often not talked about. In this post we’ll briefly go over nine distinct phases each with a different hat one might have to wear. These can be split into two stages based on the lifetime and popularity of the project.