How a Joke Job Post Turned Into Real Open Source Contributions

Three months ago I decided my pet project might actually have a future: a solid editor with cloud sync, support for popular libraries, and so on. So I started actively digging into startups and growth strategies.

I stumbled upon a popular service (or community) for founders called https://f6s.com/ — you can register your startup there, get discounts on cloud services from various partners, post jobs, and find co-founders.

So I filled out the project description. Then I thought, “Why not post a job listing, just for kicks, to see how this thing works?” Following my old habit of “not trying too hard,” I wrote something like:

Position: JavaScript Engineer
Description: Looking for JS lover who would deliver the core canvas editor features
Salary: $20,000/year (a laughably low number for Europe)
Level: Internship (basically students)

I genuinely didn’t expect anyone to respond.

But people started reaching out! Three applications in the first week. And then roughly one person every week after that. About half of them, from what I could tell, were outsourcing companies and freelancers who immediately wanted to discuss scope. I even gave up reading their messages after a while.

But recently I remembered and decided to reply honestly to everyone: “Hey, thanks for applying, we have zero investment, I can only cover pocket money, sorry.”

And one guy showed up who offered to do something for free! After a couple of messages on Telegram, he disappeared for a couple of days, then came back and built a small feature (update announcement coming soon). Huge thanks to you!

Lopaka is now fully open source, and people are already wanting to contribute. Unbelievable 🙂

P.S. I’m so happy because in six months of developing this project, not a single person had ever reached out with offers or questions about it. I’m still not sure if that’s normal. Maybe you need a critical mass of users first? Otherwise it feels like the project is basically dead and no one cares.