Meet an Open Source Contributor: Jeffry Hesse

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 Jeffry Hesse journey below. 

What was the first open source contribution you ever made?

It’s hard to remember, but the first meaningful ones I made where to Nexus Repository Manager, version 3. I helped create a lot of the formats that are open source, and some that made their way back into the product over time. The first where I felt super cool was adding Docker support to Google’s Copybara, which made me feel neat because it was a Google repository, and contributing to something so large had me feeling great.

Personally, I’ve contributed to a social justice project for years, and that has been incredibly meaningful watching it touch the lives of others. Working on projects that actually help people out, that probably tops the top for things that feel great.

What was your journey to becoming an open source maintainer? 

I’ve tinkered with code ever since I was a child, age 10 or something. I never really wrote code as a day to day thing though until I came to Sonatype. Seeing Brian and others and the mark they had made working on Maven, Nexus Repository, etc… was inspiring, and pushed me towards doing more of my work out in the open. Nowadays I’m the maintainer of a large amount of repositories, the most meaningful either being Nancy (Golang security tool that was created by Ken Duck at Sonatype), or the CycloneDX work on SBOMs. Most generally, I got to most of these places accidentally, just trying to help out on the project, and (Read more...)