At a Glance:
- Involved in open source since: 2023
- Works for: smartSense Consulting Solutions
- Eclipse Foundation contributor since: 2023
- Involved in: Eclipse Tractus-X
- Committer to: Eclipse Tractus-X
- Eclipse Foundation committer since: 2023
How did you first find your way into the open source ecosystem?
After graduating in 2013 with a software engineering degree specialising in the IT domain, I got started on my development career working with back-end Java technologies. I learned a great deal about back-end architecture and cloud-based systems and worked at a few different places. I ended up working with smartSense Consulting Solutions back in my hometown, Gandhinagar, for a client focused on automotive-data solutions.
I was already aware of open source in general, having looked into it when I had questions that I needed answered for something I was working on. I was also aware of the Eclipse Foundation as an incubator for open source projects like Jakarta EE, and of course the Eclipse IDE.
But it was working for the smartSense client that I first became directly involved in contributing to open source, through the Eclipse Tractus-X project. My work got me involved in the project, first as a contributor and then as a committer.
How have you found that experience so far?
It’s been very much a learning experience. I was familiar in broad terms with the Eclipse Foundation, but didn’t really know anything about how its processes work, what’s precisely involved with being a contributor versus a committer, and so on. So that’s really been a crash course.
But the level of support from the community has been absolutely fantastic. Many committers have been more than happy to act as a mentor and guide me through becoming a contributor and a committer. There’s been technical guidance, such as how to navigate release guidelines during production and while working with different branches of the project. And there’s also been social guidance: When I’m raising a question or a topic for discussion with the community, how should I go about it? What language should I use?
Having that guidance has really been instrumental in helping me successfully integrate into the project community. I regularly attend the bi-weekly committer meetings, which are a fantastic resource as well.
What have been the highlights of being a committer thus far for you?
The learning and visibility you get as a committer are unparalleled. Not only does your profile get visibility across the whole community, which really helps you make inroads and meet other people, you get tons of excellent experience in writing code and communicating with other committers.
Of course, there are pluses and minuses to this level of visibility. As a committer, you need to be prepared to receive a great deal of feedback on your work, when creating a pull request, and so on. In the beginning, this sometimes felt a bit challenging. Not just that it was difficult to work through, but it feels a bit like you’re being challenged by others.
But this is where the value of open source lies. Receiving all this feedback and hearing all of these different opinions and ideas is how you grow. It’s important to be open-minded to get the maximum benefit.
Any advice for someone considering getting more involved?
Don’t be afraid. There’s hesitation in the beginning, since you don’t want to ask a stupid question, especially in public. What if someone else judges me? What if they don’t think I’m any good?
But you never know until you ask. Not only is it probably true that many other people have the same question, but it’s much better to ask a basic question and get the proper answer than do the wrong thing and have to find out later.
Once you’ve done it once, it gets easier. And then you can start to learn and grow. The biggest opportunity of working in open source is being able to work with and learn from so many different people. And the only way to do that is to engage with them.
What are your goals and next steps as an Eclipse Foundation community member?
One goal is to attend more community gatherings. Next year I’m planning on attending the OSGi meetup, so that will hopefully be an opportunity for me to add to my knowledge base and meet more people.
I’d also like to expand my contributions to the Eclipse Tractus-X project. Currently, my work is within two or three repositories of the 100+ that exist in and around the project. I definitely want to explore more components of the project and contribute to more repositories. Down the road, I’d love to expand my contributions and get involved in more projects and more applications.