One trick I've learned from Edward Kmett is the policy of handing out the commit bit liberally for the open source projects I maintain. It doesn't even matter if they are active contributors or not or even if they're interested in the commit bit. Just hand out commit privileges like candy to anyone who even just looks astray at your repository
The worst case scenario (which has literally never happened to me) is that they screw things up, and if that happens you can just force push your local copy of the repository to fix things.
The vast majority of the time what actually happens is one of the following three scenarios:
-
they completely lose interest in the repository
… in which case no harm is done. You don't even need to revoke their privileges when that happens because sometimes:
-
they occasionally wake up from being "dormant" to help out
Sometimes you're not available to merge a PR, cut a release, or whatever and someone who happened to have the commit bit lying around will randomly chip in to help review or merge something once in a blue moon, but otherwise still not actively contribute. It's super helpful when this happens so having a large reserve pool of mostly inactive contributors is actually way more useful than you think.
-
they rise to the occasion and become deeply invested in the project
A lot of the time if you trust people they will do their level best to honor the trust you've placed in them and become amazing stewards of the project. This is also a great way to network and meet new people you wouldn't have otherwise met before.