Editor’s Note: We’re celebrating February 3rd, the day the term ‘Open Source’ was first coined, as World Open Source Day here at Sonatype by recognizing our incredible maintainers and contributors, and the open source projects they support. Read all about Hervé Boutemy’s journey below. 

What was the first open source contribution you ever made?

In 2001, I dared to share a problem and a solution to Apache’s Jakarta Ant community in the form of an email containing code updates (yes, sending patches against CVS was too hard for me at that time).

What is funny is that it is still visible nowadays (that’s why I could describe it precisely): https://marc.info/?l=ant-dev&m=98149620418125&w=2 near 21st anniversary!!!

What was your journey to becoming an open source maintainer?

A few years later, SourceForge availability was a key step to host my own project (taken from my work at a dead startup), discuss with users and contributors, and contribute to other small sized projects (Apache looked still a huge unreachable beast from a normal human like me).

When Maven 1 and later Maven 2 were created at Apache, I was ready to provide more structured fixes for issues that were hitting me in this new small project that was promising but full of shortcomings and basic bugs 🙂

This was the first time I was able to provide fixes to an Apache project, and the beginning of a long journey (each step took 1 to 3 years) from being a user with small contributions reviewed, then becoming a Maven developer with direct commit right, then joining the Maven Project Management Committee, then becoming Apache Software Foundation member, and even VP of Apache Maven for 2 years… I’m currently VP of Apache Attic.

What do you wish people understood about being a good (Read more...)