What Raising a Puppy Taught Me About Growing Open Source Projects
Open source projects and puppies have more in common than you might think.
Both require patience, consistency, and a surprising amount of non-technical work. Ignore those things and you end up with chaos. Pay attention to them and you end up with something healthy, energetic, and fun to be around.
Which brings me to CC.
CC is my 3-year-old chocolate lab. She’s curious, enthusiastic about everything, and still convinced that every person she meets exists primarily to throw a tennis ball.
Raising her has turned out to be a surprisingly good way to explain something I’ve spent years working on: how open source projects actually grow.
Because while people tend to focus on the code, the truth is that a lot of what makes open source successful isn’t technical at all.
It’s governance.
Community.
Advocacy.
Communication.
Events.
In other words: the ecosystem around the code.
And oddly enough, the way you approach those things looks a lot like raising a puppy.
Over time, I’ve realized that healthy open source projects tend to follow the same set of principles I used when raising CC.
Let’s call them The Puppy Rules of Open Source.
1. Feed It First: Every Healthy System Needs the Basics
When you bring home a puppy, the basics are obvious: Food, water, exercise.
If a puppy doesn’t get those things, it doesn’t matter how cute they are, you’re not going to end up with a healthy dog.
Open source projects work the same way.
You can have excellent code, but if you don’t support the surrounding ecosystem - the community, the communication, the structure - the project won’t grow the way you hope.
Healthy systems require care.
Whether they’re software projects or dogs.
2. Know Why You Got the Dog (and Why the Project Exists)
Before getting a puppy, you should probably ask yourself a question: Why are we doing this?
Do you want a lap dog that curls up on the couch?
A hiking companion that happily spends hours on the trail?
A working dog that needs a job every day?
When people skip this step, they often end up frustrated because the dog behaves exactly like the breed it was designed to be.
The same thinking applies to open source projects.
Why does the project exist?
What problem does it solve?
Why should someone spend their time using or contributing to it?
When you get the “why” right, good things happen:
Leaders stay committed.
Teams understand the direction.
The community understands the mission.
And in the case of a puppy, you end up having a lot more fun together.
3. If You Can’t Explain It, No One Will Use It
Chocolate labs have been the most popular dog breed in the United States since 1991. Why? Because people understand them immediately. They are:
Friendly.
Outgoing.
Affectionate.
High-energy.
Eager to please.
You don’t need a 20-page explanation of what a lab is like.
Open source projects should aim for the same clarity. People should quickly understand:
What the technology does
What problem it solves
Who it’s for
How people solve the problem today without it
If you can’t explain your project clearly, people won’t adopt it. Not because they don’t care. Because they don’t understand it.
Clarity lowers the barrier to entry. And lower barriers lead to growth.
4. Start with Sit, Not Advanced Tricks
When you bring home a puppy, you don’t sit down and write a 50-page training strategy. You start small and with the basics: Sit, down, leave it. Once those are working, you build from there.
Maybe you teach them to fetch.
Maybe they learn to bring you the sock they just stole from the laundry basket.
Maybe they learn to put their toys away.
Open source projects should grow the same way. You don’t need a perfect marketing and community plan on day one. Start with the most important things:
Make the project easy to find.
Make it easy to understand.
Make it easy to get started.
Then layer on more as the project grows. Over time, you build a real ecosystem around the code.
5. Take the Puppy (and the Project) Into the World
Eventually puppies have to leave the house.
They go to the park.
They meet other dogs.
They encounter new situations.
Open source projects eventually do the same thing.
They show up at conferences, meetups, webinars, and community calls.
But there’s one important rule.
Know what success looks like before you go. Are you trying to:
Raise awareness?
Find new users?
Get product feedback?
Meet potential contributors?
If you don’t know what success looks like, it’s very hard to achieve it.
The same goes for raising a dog.
If I take CC on a hike, I bring water because I know she’s going to run.
If I take her to a restaurant, I bring treats so she’ll settle down.
If she’s riding in the back seat of my convertible, she wears a harness so she doesn’t decide to explore the freeway.
Different environments require preparation. Preparation leads to success.
6. Build the Pack
Dogs don’t form a pack because someone wrote a strategy document. They form a pack because they spend time together. They play. They figure out how to interact. They learn who belongs there. For your community:
Open source projects are the same way.
You make it easy for people to ask questions.
You help new users get unstuck.
You listen to what people are actually trying to do with the project.
You connect contributors with real problems that need solving.
Most importantly, you show up consistently.
Over time, people start recognizing each other. Conversations start happening without you prompting them. New users get help from existing users.
That’s when you know the community is becoming real.
People stay involved when they feel like they belong.
What Success Actually Looks Like
Raising a puppy and growing an open source project both look simple from the outside. In reality, they succeed because of the steady work that happens every day.
You know why you're doing it.
You build the basics.
You communicate clearly.
You show up consistently.
You create a community around it.
Over time, the project becomes something bigger than what you started with. And if you do it right, you end up with something that people genuinely enjoy being part of.
In my case, that steady work also resulted in something else: A very happy 3-year-old chocolate lab named CC who now joins me on hikes, road trips, and the occasional conference trip when she can get away with it.
And every time I watch her sprint across a field like it’s the greatest moment of her life, I’m reminded of something.
Healthy things grow when you take care of them.
Whether they’re open source projects.
Or dogs.
