We’ve Updated the Zeek Contribution Guide
A lot of people who use Zeek have never contributed to it. Not because they don’t have anything to offer, but because they don’t know where to start or assume contributing means writing code they’re not confident in.
That gap showed up directly in the feedback from last year’s community survey. People wanted to get more involved but weren’t sure what counted, or worried they weren’t qualified enough to bother. So we did something to close that gap: we published a new version of our Contribution Guide that now lays out exactly what contributing to Zeek can look like, even if you only have a few minutes.
What the guide covers
The guide breaks contribution into seven types, ordered from easiest to get started with to most involved. Sharing your experience comes first: writing about how you use Zeek, what you’ve learned, or a problem you solved counts as a contribution. Answering questions in Slack or Discourse is next. If you know the answer to something another practitioner is stuck on, that’s valuable!
From there it moves into testing and feedback, content, documentation, packages, and code. Each type has its own entry point and its own expectations, so you can find where your time and skills actually fit instead of assuming the only way in is a pull request.
The point of ordering it this way is simple. Most people think contributing starts with code. For most people, it shouldn’t. If you’ve used Zeek long enough to have an opinion about it, you already have something to contribute.
Where to start
The guide lives on the Zeek wiki: https://github.com/zeek/zeek/wiki/Contribution-Guide. You don’t need a specific skill level to use it. If you’re using Zeek, that’s the qualification.
We invite you to take a look and find the entry point that works for you. See you there!