You can’t imagine how close open source projects are to you. It’s already in every aspect of your life, from the office to the home, from the gym to the restaurant.

As the saying goes, “Open source projects belong to us, not me,” which explains why these projects are so popular that even well-known business giants include open source initiatives in their business plans. But is it really necessary or possible for ordinary people to join the open source community? What’s the appeal?

In this article, I will answer these questions by introducing the pros and cons. We all know that rewards are better than punishments, so let’s start with rewards.

Learn a new skill

Are you tired of being alienated and repetitive? Do you want to learn new, exciting, and valuable skills?

Online courses (MOOCs) or books are definitely a great way to improve your skills and expand your knowledge. However, I would recommend an efficient and fun way to join the relevant open source community and learn new skills while solving practical problems in a production environment. These active open source projects are so popular because they help users solve practical problems and meet their needs. By participating in the open source community, you learn practical knowledge that can solve real production problems, rather than book rules and textbook theories.

Let’s take Apache ShardingSphere as an example. Apache ShardingSphere is appreciated by programmers and students all over the world. Based on existing community data, ShardingSphere has 14K+ GitStars, nearly 5K of fork, nearly 250 contributors on GitHub, and 160+ real-world use-case scenarios, anyone would draw this conclusion. More importantly, it is also a collaboration with Google Summer of Code 2021, Summer 2021 and Open Source Day 2021.

Its features, such as data sharding, data encryption, data scaling, distributed load testing of the shadow database, etc., were created to address the real industry needs of big data data scenarios, distributed databases, and high concurrency. In other words, people chose it to solve their production problems and have the opportunity to feedback and optimize back to the community. This pattern of back-and-forth makes the community active, diverse and able to thrive.

02 Employment Opportunities

These days, human resources departments and hiring managers often sift through candidates’ profiles and personal or professional development programs because they see it as a practical and effective way to pick the best candidates. From an employer’s point of view, these practices make sense. GitHub can give you more details about your qualifications, experience, skills, and even personality than a traditional paper resume. If you are involved in open source projects that are widely used in production environments, or have industry-developed solutions, you will be more attractive in the job market and have a better chance.

If you’ve always been anxious about applying for a job in your 30s or an internal exam, now you have a new way to deal with it. As a result, your confidence will receive an instant boost as you gain the appreciation of a newly discovered market for your skills and professional image.

I’ve heard so many stories like this that Apache ShardingSphere’s Committers and Ncn3 got HR interview calls due to their continued contribution and interaction in the open source community. In addition, SphereEx is actively recruiting people interested in full-time open source careers in the distributed database middleware vertical, as well as Java developers, please click here to see what opportunities are right for you.

03 interest

“Yep, I did it just for fun.” That’s another reason I heard from our coding and Committers. What I do in the open source community has nothing to do with my work, but it’s my hobby, and I want to get involved in the community and share ideas with others, and that’s why I’m here, is such a simple and persuasive answer. The simple fact is that while we approach most of our professional lives with a profit-driven mindset, we may find that we do so without putting our “heart and soul” in it. Finding your passion or side hustle allows you to rediscover yourself and channel that positive energy into something you love, which in turn gives you great satisfaction and creates a self-fulfilling cycle.

Frankly, that has been one of my main driving forces. Each of us struggles with different life, work or family issues, but goals, hopes and support from the community keep us striving, stumbling forward and never giving up.

04 social

An open source community is made up of many elements, the most important of which are code and people. For example, we can think of code as a building material, and there are many kinds of materials needed to build a castle. And no matter how good the location, the design or the materials, without the participation and commitment of the people, a castle will never be finished, and may even fall down at any time. The success of the Apache Foundation is a good example of the importance of the slogan “community over code”. The most important factor in creating, developing, and nurturing a community is the participants themselves, not anything else.

Instead, participants share ideas and opinions socially, find like-minded people, and are driven by common goals to benefit from the community, which ultimately helps the community improve.

Your friends include not only those who are directly around you, but also those who are scattered all over the world. Doesn’t that sound great? I say it is entirely so, at least to me. In our community, we grow up with each other, and sometimes we get together. Some of our employees come from the Apache ShardingSphere community, and we’ve known each other through the community since the early days. Wu Sheng (VP of Apache Skywalking), Jiang Ning (Technical expert of Huawei Open Source), Ted Liu (co-founder and Chairman of Open Source), Jerry Tan (VP of Apache BRPC), Wen Ming (CEO of API7), Xiangdong Huang (VP of Apache IoTDB), Wei Guo, Lidong Dai, and Gang Li (PMC of Apache DolphinScheduler) are just some of the open source community partners I’ve met.

05 business

I’ll save this for last, because it’s both a challenge and an advantage. Some, but not all, open source community project maintainers have the opportunity to build successful commercial enterprises by leveraging what they have done and learned in the open source community.

Today, open source businesses are booming, driven by the needs of technology itself, venture capital, society, and different industries. This has actively encouraged open source projects aimed at commercialization to provide more and more specialized products. However, developing a thriving open source community and seeking to commercialize it is a long and arduous journey that is not for the faint of heart. As someone who is currently on this path, my advice is to at least think deeply about your commitment before embarking on this journey. Of course, the ultimate prize is attractive, but it will mean you have to make countless sacrifices in your life. I don’t want to sound obnoxious, but anyway, if you want to try, go for it, and good luck!

If you’re looking for an active open source community, Apache ShardingSphere is definitely a good option you should consider. Additionally, SphereEx currently offers a number of job opportunities that will allow you to become a full-time open source developer or community manager.

Thank you for reading this article. The next article will be “How to join the Open Source Community.” Welcome to continue to follow us, thank you!

The author

Pan Juan | Trista

Co-founder of SphereEx, Member of Apache, Apache ShardingSphere PMC, Apache BRPC (in incubation) Tutor

Twitter: twitter.com/trista86934…

Making: github.com/tristaZero

ShardingSphere lot: github.com/apache/shar…