Open source software would not be possible without maintainers who dedicate their time and expertise to writing, maintaining and updating code to ensure software remains functional, secure, and up-to-date. From bug fixes and feature enhancements to regular testing and security enhancements, code contributors are essential to an open source community. This #FirstASFContribution post highlights contributors to Apache Arrow, Apache Cassandra, Apache Directory, Apache Flink, and Apache Kafka.
Phillip LeBlanc, Apache Arrow
Phillip was unit testing some code in his Golang ETL pipeline using RecordBuilder. When he kept getting an error, Philip decided to take a closer look at the code. He realized that the test was sending extra fields in the JSON test data to the RecordBuilder than what was actually needed, causing the RecordBuilder to fail. Philip made a fix to consume the token representing the unknown field, and decided to contribute that back to the Arrow Go library.
Philip believes that Arrow will become the cornerstone of all data and AI applications and has used it extensively for his startup.
Shawn McKinney, Apache Directory
Shawn was instrumental in migrating Fortress code when it became an Apache Directory sub project back in 2014. Since then, Shawn has become an active member of the ASF community; from committing code to speaking at conferences like Community Over Code (formerly ApacheCon). He believes that community is a cornerstone of ASF projects, including the Board, PMCs, committers, members and other contributors.
Shawn is especially thankful to Emmanuel Lecharny who really taught him “how the (ASF open source) sausage is made” and Bertrand Delacretaz who mentored him after becoming an ASF member. He also gave a shout out to Sharan Foga for her tireless, positive energy and Rich Bowen for being a positive role model in the ASF ecosystem.
Maulin Vasavada, Apache Cassandra and Apache Kafka
Maulin helped enhance the security posture for both Apache Cassandra and Apache Kafka by making the SSLContext pluggable. Since then, Maulin has continued to contribute to the ASF community, helping others contribute as well.
Maulin extends gratitude to Cassandra community members Berenguer Blasi, Jon Meredith, Stefan Miklosovic and the Kafka community community, including Rajini Sivaram.
Swathi Chandrashekar, Apache Flink
When using Apache Flink Swathi noticed that clusters were getting deleted and recreated when scaling took place. By contributing a performance improvement for the Flink Kubernetes operator, Swathi helped ensure that clusters would not get deleted and therefore existing jobs would not be impacted due to scaling.
Swathi is thankful for Ramkrishna Vasudevan and Gyula Fora’s help and collaboration.
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.
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The post First-Time ASF Contributors Share Technical Chops to Improve User Experience appeared first on The Apache Software Foundation Blog.