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

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 have incorporated open source initiatives into their business plans. But is it necessary or even possible for ordinary people to join the open source community? What’s the charm?

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.

01 Master a new skill

Are you tired of being distant and repetitive every day? Do you want to learn a new, exciting, and valuable skill?

Online courses (MOOCs) or books are definitely a great way to improve your skills and expand your knowledge. However, I would like to recommend another efficient and fun approach, which is 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 real problems and meet their needs. By participating in the open source community, you learn the real world knowledge that can be used to solve real-world production problems, not the rules and theories of the book.

Let’s take Apache ShardingSphere as an example. Apache ShardingSphere is appreciated by programmers and students around the world. Using existing community data as a reference, ShardingSphere has 14K+ Gitstars, nearly 5K Fork, nearly 250 contributors on GitHub, and 160+ real use case scenarios, and anyone would conclude this based on that data. More importantly, it’s also a collaboration between Google Summer of Code 2021, Summer 2021, and Open Source Day 2021.

Its features, such as data sharding, data encryption, data expansion, shadow databases for distributed load testing, etc., were created to address the real industry needs of big data data scenarios, distributed databases, and high concurrency. In other words, people choose it to solve their production problems and have the opportunity to feed feedback and optimizations back to the community. This echoes the pattern that makes the community active, diverse and able to thrive.

02 Employment Opportunities

Today, human resources departments and hiring managers often screen candidates’ profiles and personal or career development programs because they believe it is a practical and effective way to pick out the best candidates. From the employer’s point of view, these practices make sense. GitHub can provide a more detailed description of your qualifications, experience, skills, and even personality than a traditional paper resume. If you work on an open source project that is widely used in a production environment, or if you have a solution developed in the industry, you will be very attractive and have a better chance in the job market.

If you’ve always been anxious about applying for a job inside a book or in your 30s, you may now have a new way of coping. As a result, you get an instant confidence boost as you gain the new-found market appreciation for your skills and professional image.

I’ve heard a lot of stories like this one, and those of Apache Shardingsphere got a call from HR for an interview because of their continued contributions and interactions with the open source community. In addition, Sphereex is actively recruiting people who are interested in full-time open source careers in the distributed database middleware vertical, as well as Java developers. Please click here to see an opportunity that fits you.

03 interest

“Yep, I did it just for fun.” That’s another reason I heard from our neighbors and committers. What I do in the open source community has nothing to do with my job, but it’s my hobby, and I want to get involved in the community, and exchange ideas with others, and that’s why I’m here, and that’s such a simple and compelling answer. The simple truth is that while we approach most of our professional lives with a profit-driven mindset, we may find that we do so without our “heart and soul” in it. Finding your passion or sideline will allow you to rediscover yourself and channel that positive energy into the things you love, which can also lead to great satisfaction, creating a self-fulfilling cycle.

Frankly, that has always been one of my main driving forces. Everyone struggles with different life, work, or family issues, but goals, hope, 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 building materials, many of which are needed to build a castle. And no matter how good the location, design or materials are, without the participation and commitment of the people, a castle will never be completed and may even fall down at any moment. 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 nourishing a community is the participants themselves, not anything else.

Instead, participants exchange ideas and opinions socially, find like-minded people, and, driven by a common goal, benefit from the community, which ultimately contributes to the improvement of the community.

Your friends include not only those who are directly in your life, but also those who are scattered around the world. Does that sound great? I say it is exactly that, at least to me. In our community, we grow together, and sometimes we meet up. Some of our employees are from the Apache Shardingsphere community, through which we have known each other since the early days. Wu Sheng (VP of Apache Skywalking), Jiang Ning (Technical Expert of Huawei Open Source Department), Ted Liu (Cofounder 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 the Apache DolphinScheduler) are just a few of the people I have met in the open source community.

05 business

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

Today, the open source business is booming, driven by the technology itself, venture capital, society and the demands of different industries. This has actively encouraged open source projects aimed at commercialization to provide increasingly specialized products. However, developing a thriving open source community and seeking to commercialize it requires 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 offensive, but anyway, if you want to give it a try, go for it, and good luck!

If you are looking for an active open source community, Apache ShardingSphere is definitely a good choice you should consider. In addition, Sphereex currently offers many 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 one will be “How to Join the Open Source Community”. Welcome to continue to follow us, thank you!

The author Pan Juan | Trista

Sphereex co-founder, Apache member, Apache ShardingSphere PMC, Apache BRPC (in incubation) mentor

Twitter： https://twitter.com/trista869…

Making: https://github.com/tristaZero

ShardingSphere GitHub：https://github.com/apache/sha…



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