--- title: I Didn't Expect Open Source to Be the Hard Part | daily.dev description: A developer reflects on the unexpected challenges of open-sourcing a side project called Telemetry Tracker. While building the SDKs, ingest API, and dashboard... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/i-didn-t-expect-open-source-to-be-the-hard-part-ohh4ajfdb twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: I Didn't Expect Open Source to Be the Hard Part | daily.dev og:description: A developer reflects on the unexpected challenges of open-sourcing a side project called Telemetry Tracker. While building the SDKs, ingest API, and dashboard... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/i-didn-t-expect-open-source-to-be-the-hard-part-ohh4ajfdb og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/ohh4AJfdb.png og:image:alt: I Didn't Expect Open Source to Be the Hard Part og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # I Didn't Expect Open Source to Be the Hard Part **[Sanja Malovic](https://daily.dev/sources/sn0lrbaexucjjmw4ttl5f)** · [@unjica](https://daily.dev/unjica) · 3 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A developer reflects on the unexpected challenges of open-sourcing a side project called Telemetry Tracker. While building the SDKs, ingest API, and dashboard was enjoyable, the real difficulty turned out to be everything else: writing documentation, reviewing pull requests thoughtfully, managing GitHub issues, and fostering a welcoming contributor community. A key insight shared is reframing code reviews to ask 'would I want to contribute again after receiving this?' The post concludes that open source is fundamentally more about people than code. ## Content When I started building Telemetry Tracker, I thought the difficult part would be writing the code. I was wrong. Building the SDKs, ingest API, dashboard, and source maps was actually the fun part. The part I completely underestimated was everything that came after I made the repository public. Writing documentation. Reviewing pull requests. Answering questions. Thinking about API design. Maintaining GitHub issues. Trying to make contributors feel welcome. I went from writing code every evening to spending almost as much time doing everything _except_ writing code. ## It started as a side project Telemetry Tracker wasn't supposed to become a "real" product. I wanted a place to experiment with telemetry, dashboards, and TypeScript SDKs. Something I could use across my own projects. Eventually, I decided to open-source it. That changed everything. ## My first external pull request I'll be honest. When the first external PR arrived, my instinct was to review it like I review code at work. I found every little thing I wanted changed. Technically, I wasn't wrong. But then I realized something. This person was spending their free time improving something _I_ had built. That completely changed how I approach reviews. Now, before submitting a review, I ask myself one question: > **If I received this review, would I want to contribute again?** Sometimes a tiny improvement isn't worth making someone feel like their work wasn't appreciated. That doesn't mean lowering standards. It means explaining _why_ something should change, acknowledging the good parts, and remembering there's a person on the other side. ## The code isn't the whole project I used to think software was mostly about writing code. Now I'd probably split it like this: - 50% writing code - 50% documentation, communication, releases, reviews, GitHub, and community The more the project grows, the more true that becomes. ## Small milestones feel huge The first GitHub star. The first fork. The first issue. The first contributor. None of those changed the project overnight. But together, they made it feel alive. That's something I never experienced when building projects privately. ## I'm still learning Telemetry Tracker still has a long roadmap ahead. Performance Monitoring is next, followed by Alerts and Session Replay. But the biggest lesson so far hasn't been technical. It's that open source is much more about people than code. And honestly... I didn't expect that to be the hard part. --- If you're curious, feel free to take a look. ⭐ GitHub: https://github.com/Telemetry-Tracker/telemetry-tracker 🌐 Website: https://telemetry-tracker.com I'd love to hear what surprised you most when working on your own open-source projects. ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [What They Don't Tell You About Maintaining an Open Source Project](https://daily.dev/posts/what-they-don-t-tell-you-about-maintaining-an-open-source-project-ed1eqebor) · Hacker News · 27 upvotes · 1 comments - [I Open-Sourced a Slice of a Private Project. The Hard Part Wasn’t the Code.](https://daily.dev/posts/i-open-sourced-a-slice-of-a-private-project-the-hard-part-wasn-t-the-code--m2yhpxdeb) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The ego problem killing your open source project](https://daily.dev/posts/the-ego-problem-killing-your-open-source-project-kbysch8ez) · All Things Open · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Open Source Is Not One-Size-Fits-All — Find Your Fit](https://daily.dev/posts/open-source-is-not-one-size-fits-all-find-your-fit-tiycof0yd) · Scott Logic · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Open Source Does Not Imply Open Community](https://daily.dev/posts/open-source-does-not-imply-open-community-s1l8kee4w) · Hacker News · 2 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#community](https://daily.dev/tags/community), [#typescript](https://daily.dev/tags/typescript), [#code-review](https://daily.dev/tags/code-review) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/i-didn-t-expect-open-source-to-be-the-hard-part-ohh4ajfdb) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https://daily.dev/posts/i-didn-t-expect-open-source-to-be-the-hard-part-ohh4ajfdb","headline":"I Didn't Expect Open Source to Be the Hard Part","text":"A developer reflects on the unexpected challenges of open-sourcing a side project called Telemetry Tracker. 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