DevRel This Week, 28 September: Hacktoberfest Drops the Pull Request

DevRel this week, 28 September 2026: Meta put $1 million into a VR competition and another $1 million into an AI hackathon, Cloudflare offered $500,000 in credits and a billboard to one startup, and OpenAI DevDay runs tomorrow at $650 a ticket for people it invited. Two things got worse. Hacktoberfest starts on Thursday with pull requests no longer counting for anything, and Microsoft switched off Office 365 E3 developer accounts without sending an email.

Can anyone get into OpenAI DevDay tomorrow?

OpenAI DevDay is on Tuesday 29 September at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Sam Altman’s keynote (the main talk) is at 10am Pacific and streams free. Everything else is only for people there in person. You had to apply over the summer, invites went out in late July, a ticket is $650, and there are no tickets on the day. Eight DevDay Exchanges, smaller one-day versions, follow later in the year in Bengaluru, Tokyo, Seoul, Paris, Berlin, London, São Paulo and Mexico City (devday.openai.com).

Cloudflare Connect is three weeks later, 19 to 21 October at Moscone West, at $595 a pass (Cloudflare). GitHub Universe is the week after that, 28 and 29 October, back at Fort Mason (GitHub). Three developer conferences in one city in five weeks.

Meta and Cloudflare are paying prize money

Meta Connect was on 24 September. The developer recap has two competitions in it. The 2026 VR Start Developer Competition opened the same day and closes on 18 November, with $1 million split across 20 prizes from $20,000 to $100,000 in gaming, entertainment and productivity, winners announced on 11 December, and you have to be in the VR Start programme to enter (Meta). Next to it is a Global AI Developer Hackathon with another $1 million and free Model API credits (credits are money you can only spend on their services), now that the Meta Model API is out of beta and open to everyone (Meta Connect recap).

Cloudflare’s Birthday Week opened with the founders’ letter on 27 September. The number that matters is 7 million developers on the platform. The letter also says automated traffic passed human traffic in May 2026, earlier than they had forecast, and says it will give creators and app builders a way to get paid when AI agents use their work (Cloudflare). Today’s posts include The Cold Start. Five startups that have taken less than $10 million from investors present live at Connect on 19 October, five minutes each, in front of Matthew Prince, Michelle Zatlyn and Dane Knecht. The winner gets $500,000 in credits and a billboard in San Francisco (Cloudflare).

Google let other people’s agents into Android Studio

On 24 September Google released Bring Your Own Agent in Android Studio Rabbit 2, the Canary build (the earliest test version). You can run Anthropic’s Claude Agent, OpenAI’s Codex or Google’s own Antigravity inside the app you write code in, and it hands the agent build diagnostics and control of the emulator (a fake phone on your computer) through the Agent Client Protocol, a shared way for editors and agents to talk to each other (Android Developers Blog). Matthew Warner, the product manager, said “it’s important for you to be able to build Android apps in the way that works best for you and your team”.

Hacktoberfest starts Thursday and pull requests don’t count

Hacktoberfest 2026 runs through October, and this year the four pull requests for a t-shirt rule is gone. The FAQ says why: “with the rise of AI tools making low-effort PRs trivial to generate, open-source maintainers faced unprecedented floods of noise, spam, and burnout” (Hacktoberfest FAQ). In its place are 300 plus Fests, in-person and online events of up to 12 hours run by local organisers, with DigitalOcean presenting and MLH and DEV running it. T-shirts are only at Fests, if the organiser decides to and as supplies allow. Online, there is a Swag Envelope for hitting milestones that had not been published as of 20 September, when 217 Fests were registered (DEV). The homepage’s suggestions for what to do instead are “write your first skills.md, build your own open-source agent, fine-tune an open-weight model” (hacktoberfest.com). A skills file is a short document that tells an AI agent how to use a project.

I wrote in August about agents reading your docs and this month about DevRel in the era of AI. Hacktoberfest now tells a first-time contributor to write one of those files before anything else.

Microsoft switched off developer accounts with no email

Microsoft told Office 365 E3 Developer subscribers at the end of June that the subscription was being retired and set 14 September as the date (Topedia, June). A tenant is a Microsoft 365 account with its own users, and those tenants were disabled a few days late with a note in the admin page that the subscription would be deleted. No email (Topedia, 25 September). The suggested move is to a paid Microsoft 365 suite to keep the data. The free E5 sandbox (a test copy of Microsoft 365) from the Microsoft 365 Developer Program now needs a Visual Studio Professional or Enterprise subscription, a Microsoft partner level, or a Premier support contract to qualify (Microsoft 365 Developer Program FAQ). A personal account can join the programme. It can’t get the sandbox.

Also in DevRel this week, 28 September: npm and RubyGems add a wait before a package goes live

npm 12.1.0 adds a kind of token that can only put a package into staging, a holding area before it goes live, and npm stage shows what is waiting there. RubyGems 4.1.0 beta 1 adds a --cooldown option to install, update and outdated, plus post-quantum signatures, which is signing that future quantum computers can’t fake (Andrew Nesbitt, 26 September). They land after a run of attacks between April and July that stole publishing tokens and put poisoned packages on npm (Unit 42).

FAQ

When is OpenAI DevDay 2026 and can I watch it?

DevDay is on Tuesday 29 September 2026 at Fort Mason in San Francisco. The keynote with Sam Altman starts at 10am Pacific and streams free. In-person places were by application, which closed on 10 July, and cost $650. The other sessions are recorded and posted on openai.com after the event.

Do pull requests still count for Hacktoberfest 2026?

No. The four pull requests for a t-shirt rule is gone. Hacktoberfest 2026 is built around 300 plus in-person Fests of up to 12 hours. T-shirts are only handed out at Fests, at the organiser’s discretion and while stock lasts. Online participants get a Swag Envelope for milestones that had not been published as of 20 September.

What did Meta announce for developers at Connect 2026?

Two $1 million competitions. The VR Start Developer Competition opened on 24 September and closes on 18 November, with 20 prizes from $20,000 to $100,000 across gaming, entertainment and productivity. A Global AI Developer Hackathon has another $1 million and free Model API credits. The v207 SDKs for the 2027 VR Glasses are out now.

What happened to the Office 365 E3 Developer subscription?

Microsoft retired it. The change was announced at the end of June 2026, the cut was set for 14 September, and the tenants were disabled a few days after that with a note in the admin centre saying they would be deleted. No email was sent. The free E5 sandbox now needs a Visual Studio Professional or Enterprise subscription, a partner tier or a Premier support contract.

Hacktoberfest starts on Thursday, and this is the first year a pull request on its own gets you nothing.