This post is part of a series called Open Source Citizenry in which we discuss ways to eliminate the barriers that developers and companies face to fully participating in the open source community.
You might think there's not really anything to being a good user of open source. Install the library, use it how you need it, and move on. And honestly, for the most part that's a fine thing to do. But if you want to be more than one of the silent users, if you want to help the projects you use just by using them, there are lots of ways to do it. You could become a vital part of pushing forward your favorite open source projects without ever altering a single line of code.
Ultimately, being a good open source citizen is about respecting what open source is, how it's made, and how you can help. Open source software is made by many; that's its beauty and its curse. If you can help bring more order to the naturally chaotic development process by adding documentation, fielding support requests or even just encouraging maintainers to keep going, you are becoming a vital part of the open source ecosystem and helping it to grow.