In the answers of What\'s the canonical retort to \"it\'s open source, submit a

Question

In the answers of What's the canonical retort to "it's open source, submit a patch"?, many people voiced the opinion that simply asking people to submit a patch is arrogant and rude.

But it seems to me that as a developer on any open source project, you will see many more feature requests on the mailing list than you could possibly implement. So when a user says, "I would like to see feature X", the truth of the matter is usually that the chances of it getting implemented are pretty slim unless they submit a patch themselves. Also, sometimes a little encouragement might be all that's needed to turn a user into a contributor.

On the other hand, you don't want to scare (potential) contributors away by coming off as rude.

So how would you say "please submit patches instead of asking for features" in a friendly manner?

Explanation / Answer

In short, you explain you don't have unlimited time to do their work for free. (You can skip the 'for free' bit), and that they can contribute any time they like, it's not "your" project, its everyone's project.

so you say "We're really sorry, that's a great idea but we're just too busy with all the other work going on, we'll add it to the list, but if you'd really like to get this in, and you'd like to help us out by contributing to the project then that'd be wonderful. We have some documentation to help guys get into making changes to the project, they're here, so if you have the skills and the time and want to help us, then please have a go and send us a patch with your changes. We might have to make some mods to it when we get it so it fits in with the project's standards, but you'll be doing us a great favour by at least giving us a leg-up for this work and we'll love you for helping us out".

Of course, once you start asking for patches, you can never, ever, leave them lying on your ticket system for too long, if you get a lot, you'll be integrating them more than doing the work you used to. You may not like that, but it's necessary if you want patches to keep coming.

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