Blog

Community Collaboration Encourages First-Time ASF Contributors to Continue Their Journey with Open Source Software  

‘Community over code’ is more than a mantra at the ASF. The Foundation recognizes that, for open source projects to thrive and endure, a healthy community is critical. We also believe that neutrality must be a cornerstone of our work together – ensuring that all individuals are given an equal opportunity to collaborate. 

This #FirstASFContribution post highlights the profound impact that mentorship, collaboration, and guidance can have on a first-time contributor to an open source project. Community members from Apache Druid, Apache Airflow, Apache Camel, Apache Iceberg, and Apache Airflow share their stories about how an initial pull request led to many more contributions to open source thanks to the community support they received. 

Tejaswini Bandlamudi, Apache Druid 
Tejaswini’s first ASF contribution involved fixing an issue with HTTP-based ingestion while using Apache Druid. Since her first pull request, Tejaswini has worked on fixing various bugs, contributed features towards making Druid more cost efficient, and led the work migrating Druid’s continuous integration (CI) system from Travis CI to GitHub Actions. 

Tejaswini says that working with seasoned contributors to Druid helped her learn and evolve as a developer. 

Hussein Awala, Apache Airflow 
Hussein began his journey contributing to ASF projects by adding a small feature to Apache Airflow to enhance sensor retrying functionality. He also immersed himself into Airflow by engaging with the community on Stack Overflow and GitHub, addressing questions and issues, and participating in discussions. To-date, Hussein has contributed more than 70 commits across ASF projects, including Airflow and Apache Hudi. 

Hussein says the highly responsive and supportive nature of the ASF community and its dedication to maintaining valuable open source software motivates him to continue contributing. When asked if there was anyone in the community he’d like to thank for their support or mentorship, Hussein says, “I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all the committers and PMC members who have been instrumental in supporting me throughout my journey. In particular, I want to thank Jarek Potiuk and Elad Kalif for their exceptional support and guidance.”  

Vignesh Nayak Manel, Apache Camel 
Vignesh’s first ASF contribution involved implementing the AWS Step Functions component for Apache Camel. He found the Camel project interesting, because it provides a wide range of components and has several upstream projects that simplifies implementation for many types of frameworks and applications.

Vignesh says he is thankful for the ASF’s standards, processes and welcoming community, all of which encouraged his first contribution. 

Abid Mohammed, Apache Iceberg 
Abid identified and fixed a data loss issue that was occurring within Apache Iceberg tables when data files were added to an existing table using the ‘add_files’ spark procedure. He noted that “it was an interesting issue to fix as it was hard to reproduce.” 

Abid continues to be a part of the Iceberg community and is thankful to Russell Spitzer for his help and encouragement. 

Nick Crane, Apache Arrow
Nick learned about the ASF when he participated in the Apache Arrow Apprenticeship Program to become an Arrow maintainer. His first pull request (PR) initially involved updating some tests to remove a deprecated function, but it became a more complicated issue than originally anticipated. Nick says this first ASF contribution was “an excellent experience in open source collaboration. I was given lots of helpful advice in the code review, and it was exciting to get my first PR merged.” 

He thanks the Arrow community for their collaboration, and extends special thanks to Jon Keane and Neal Richardson for being excellent mentors and collaborators. 

The Community Over Code Ethos
The stories of these first-time contributors showcase the “community over code” ethos that’s deeply embedded in ASF’s open source communities. These experiences demonstrate how contributions can come from a diverse range of individuals, and how even simple bug fixes ensure the long-term stability of ASF projects. We applaud the collective efforts of these contributors and recognize that the open-source community’s strength lies in collaboration and support.

Connect with ASF

The post Community Collaboration Encourages First-Time ASF Contributors to Continue Their Journey with Open Source Software   appeared first on The Apache Software Foundation Blog.