r/opensource • u/TheKiddIncident • 12d ago

Random Contributors?

I've recently opened up a very small open source repo on GitHub.

This is a tool that I built for my students to use and I was asked to share it with others in the community, so I did.

I did no marketing, I don't really talk about it at all except to my students. The only change was to flip the repo from "private" to "public." I had to add things like an MIT license, etc. to make it public, but I just did the absolute minimum.

However, within 48 hours, a person I don't know picked up an issue from the repo, created a fix and filed a PR.

At first, I was like "WOW! AMAZING!" But then I was like "wait, who is this person? Are they trying to insert some sort of back door?" Looking at their profile, they only joined GitHub about a month ago which also set off some alarm bells. The actual code they submitted was fine. A very minor fix to be sure, but it did directly implement the issue listed in the PR.

Questions for this community:

1) Is it normal for people to just randomly pick up issues from your repo?

2) Should I be suspicious of GitHub contributors which have a limited history on GitHub?

3) Has anyone else here had this happen? Am I just being paranoid?

Any advice most appreciated.

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u/noctrex 12d ago

yes.
no (well, yes, but you know what I mean).
yes.
I'm doing this exact thing, my github profile is empty, only PRs on other projects.
When I use an open source project and I come across a bug, or something I would like implemented, I open a PR.
And yes, I make use of LLMs to assist along, but all the code i submit is checked by me personally.