Being among the top contributors of the Odoo Community Association (OCA) is often perceived as a kind of technical badge of honor. And while it certainly reflects consistency and effort, it’s worth explaining clearly what it really implies… and also what it does not.
Because from the outside, what’s behind it is often oversimplified.
It’s not about volume, it’s about responsibility
Being a top contributor does not simply mean writing a lot of commits, applying many changes, or being the person who opens the most pull requests. In practice, it usually involves:
- Reviewing other people’s code
- Maintaining modules over the long term
- Responding to issues
- Making decisions that affect many Odoo instances (not just your own or your clients’)
In other words, code output is not the most important part. What really matters is continuous technical responsibility. And even if it’s not always said out loud, this comes at a cost in time, focus, and energy.
Learning through friction
One of the greatest values of contributing in an open source environment is the constant technical friction:
- Different approaches to solving the same problem
- Architectural and structural debates
- Decisions that must be justified with arguments, not hierarchy
This is where most of the learning happens. If these moments are used well, contributors can grow significantly by learning from very capable people with deep knowledge in specific areas.
It is also here where many developers realize that this environment is not comfortable for everyone. Not because of a lack of skill, but because working in the open means accepting continuous review and diverse opinions about your work. This is not a negative thing, but it is something worth knowing before idealizing it.
Code that is no longer “yours”
Another key point is that in open source communities, code stops being personal property and becomes community-owned. This means:
- Maintaining modules you did not write
- Making decisions about evolutions you did not start
- Prioritizing global consistency over personal preferences
This represents a real shift in how you write code and, more importantly, how you think about projects.
What a top contributor is not
It’s important to keep this in mind. Top contributors:
- Are not infallible
- Are not always right (although it is usually a good idea to listen to them)
- Are not above anyone else, even if they have a global perspective that is worth considering
In fact, the more visible their work is, the more exposed it is to review and opinion. For some people this feels natural; for others, it can be difficult to manage.
What impact does this have on real projects?
Having contributors with this profile involved in projects does have direct consequences. In general, they tend to bring:
- Better technical judgment
- More respect for standards
- Fewer “quick fixes” that turn into long-term problems
And this is not because the OCA is a quality seal, but because these people are constantly trained to think long term and focus on solution stability. In ERP implementations like Odoo, this makes a real difference.