Casual contributors are like tourists visiting New York City for a weekend. Just as we wouldn’t expect, or even want, tourists to participate in local governance decisions, we shouldn’t assume that casual contributors are part of a project’s contributor community simply because they are physically present. After studying why newcomers abandon open source projects, researcher Igor Steinmacher et al. conclude, “By reading the discussions initiated by dropouts, we realized that part of the newcomers had no intention to join the project.”
