At a glance:
- Involved in open source since: 2017
- Works for: Eurotech
- Eclipse Foundation contributor since: 2022
- Involved in: Eclipse Kura
- Eclipse Foundation committer since: 2022
What’s your background as a developer?
I have a master’s degree in electronics engineering, but I specialised more on the software side of things. I started my career developing embedded devices, particularly in image processing for automotive and railway applications.
At the time, everything I worked on was proprietary software. Today, I’m a Principal Software Engineer at Eurotech, working in the IoT team. That work is closely tied to the Eclipse Foundation ecosystem, especially Eclipse Kura™ and Eclipse Kapua™.
How did you get involved in open source?
My path into open source started from the open hardware side.
While I was at university, I became interested in the maker ecosystem, things like Arduino and 3D printers. That world is heavily built around open source and open hardware, and it really caught my attention.
Later, I became deeply interested in custom mechanical keyboards. That ecosystem also exists almost entirely because of open source collaboration. I eventually contributed my first pull request to QMK, an open source firmware for custom keyboards.
From there, I tried to make as many of my own projects open source as possible. I consider myself an open source advocate, so I naturally want my projects to be publicly available and collaborative.
One of my more popular projects is a keyboard I designed myself, which is fully open hardware and open source. I also maintain a number of smaller projects on GitHub, and I gave a talk on mechanical keyboards at EclipseCon 2022, which is one of the most watched videos on the Eclipse Foundation’s YouTube channel.
Professionally, things evolved further after I joined Eurotech’s IoT team. Our software follows an open core model, and our main projects, EC [Everyware Cloud] and ESF [EverywareSoftware Framework], correspond to the open source Eclipse projects Eclipse Kura™ and Eclipse Kapua™. So today, a major part of my job is producing open source software, which I honestly think is great.
How did you become a committer at the Eclipse Foundation?
It happened fairly naturally through my work at Eurotech. Because I was heavily involved in Eclipse Kura and already working extensively on the project, becoming a committer was more or less part of the role. As I gained more knowledge and responsibility within the project, I was eventually appointed as a committer in 2022.
Eclipse Kura itself has been around for quite a long time, close to sixteen years when you include both its open source and earlier proprietary history.
What are the biggest challenges as a committer?
One of the biggest challenges is balancing business needs with the needs of the open source community. Sometimes we have deadlines or commitments to customers that force us to prioritise certain work, which can unfortunately push some open source tasks into the background. That can make it difficult to stay as responsive as we would like with contributors and community members.
Communication is another challenge. Because of our open core model, some development work happens behind closed doors due to customer requirements or business constraints. From the outside, contributors sometimes only see part of the picture, which can make it harder to understand why certain decisions are made or why some roadmap items are delayed.
We’re very aware of these issues and are actively trying to improve. Recently, for example, we introduced GitHub discussions to improve communication with contributors, and that has been working fairly well so far.
Transparency is something we care about deeply, but in practice, it can sometimes be challenging to achieve perfectly in a commercial open source environment.
What have been the highlights of being a committer?
One of the biggest highlights came recently when we learned that more than 5,000 devices running Eclipse Kura are being used in and around Rome to monitor and manage parts of the electrical grid. That was a particularly meaningful moment because it demonstrated how mature and reliable the project has become. What made it even more rewarding was that this deployment happened through direct collaboration with adopters who contributed back to the project. I personally worked with them on pull requests and integrations.
Seeing software you contribute to being used in critical infrastructure at that scale is incredibly rewarding.
Any advice for someone new to open source?
Find something that genuinely interests you, whether it’s connected to your work, your hobbies, or simply something you enjoy using, and start contributing by opening issues, proposing improvements, reviewing code, or submitting pull requests. Every contribution helps you grow, both as a developer and as a member of the open source community.
The important thing is simply to get involved.
Any recommendations for companies relying on open source?
Contribute back. If your company depends on open source software, and you find bugs or improve functionality internally, contribute those changes upstream whenever possible. Financial support also matters, especially for smaller projects and independent maintainers.
We try to do this ourselves, contributing fixes upstream and financially supporting projects and developers where possible. But as an industry, we still need to do more.
Many small open source projects are critical infrastructure for massive technology companies, yet the maintainers often struggle to sustain themselves financially. If companies benefit from these projects, they should support them in every way they can. That’s how we ensure these projects continue to exist and thrive.