Things got a little out of hand with #MeetTheMaintainers
You liked the posts, sent them to friends, and some of you even said, “I didn’t know this existed.”
Well, now you do. And there’s a URL to prove it.
Introducing, http://forklore.in
Forklore is part slambook, part field guide, and part soft-spoken fan project, celebrating the people keeping FOSS weird, wonderful, and working.
(hat tip to @Ram_Iyengar for the title)
It’s where you’ll find all 31 of our #MaintainerMay profiles, short, funny, unfiltered stories of the folks behind the forks.
It’s also a space to add more. Because open source doesn’t stop after May.
Abhinav didn’t file a support ticket, he wrote the support system.
Say hi to LibreDesk, open source, self-hosted, and surprisingly complete.
Someone give this guy a badge or a nap.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the weekend, and that brings us another #ForkloreFriday
Today we are talking Vibinex with Avikalp Kumar Gupta
Vibinex helps reviewers make sense of pull requests. Faster, smarter, and without losing their mind.
Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self
Make it easy for people to help you. And go out more often to talk about what you are building. No one will care about your awesome project if they never knew about its existence.
For those who are just joining us, Forklore, tldr- is a work-in-progress archive of the coolest open-source maintainers from India. Head over to Forklore, read a story or two, and if you’ve got one to tell, here’s how you can get featured. See you on the other side?
P.S - Like you read correctly, Forklore is a WIP, help us make it better, give us feedback, fork something, help us fix it and earn virtual hugs, among other things.
Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project?
I started out of curiosity—to learn, challenge myself, and build something useful. Over time, it became more than code. It’s about solving real problems, seeing others use it, and growing with the community.
Know someone who should be featured on this list? Drop their names on this thread or another and we’ll take it from there. Think you make the cut? Here’s how you can get featured.
Apparently we are now officially closer to 2050 than we are to 2000. To help you come to terms with that, I am here to remind y’all today is a Friday and we’ve got a restored masterpiece from 1981, Umrao Jaan, in the theaters.
Forklore is still cooking
Spotted something missing? Want to see your favourite FOSS human here? Say hi, send a patch. We hear everything (except compiler warnings).
This week for #ForkloreFriday we meet, JupyterGIS and Arjun Verma.
JupyterGIS is a JupyterLab extension for collaborative geospatial work; layers, analysis, commentary, you name it, all in one shared notebook. (Finally, a way to argue over shapefiles, in real time!)
Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project?
There was no entry barrier, people were super supportive—that’s what drew me in. From not being able to afford proper meals while living away from home, to not having the means to buy a basic computer, to now being able to fulfill my responsibilities and see small dreams come to life—open source has given me a lot. I feel it’s my duty to give back. What keeps me going today is the opportunity to collaborate with people I’ve always looked up to. Seeing my work make a real-world impact brings me personal joy. And beyond that, it also helps me establish myself, as I get full credit for the work I do.
Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self
Embrace openness, uphold rigorous standards, and trust the community. High standards aren’t barriers; they inspire trust and attract contributors who share your values. I discovered open source in my late 50s and I’m still building at the age of 64—it is never too late to start!
For those who are just joining us, Forklore, tldr- is a work-in-progress archive of the coolest open-source maintainers from India. Head over to Forklore, read a story or two, and if you’ve got one to tell, here’s how you can get featured. See you on the other side?
Frontend components, server utilities, and fewer “why isn’t this reactive?” moments, all built on the Frappe Framework. This #ForkloreFriday, meet Faris Ansari and Frappe UI, a UI layer that’s reactive, declarative, and not emotionally draining.
Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project?
Honestly, I do this project because it makes my colleague’s and my life easier. I am building Gameplan which is a frontend on top of Frappe Framework app. Since we are building a bunch of apps like these, it made sense to extract common code into a reusable package.
Plugging in our regular asks 1. Know someone who should be on this list? Drop their names in the thread here. 2. Think you should be featured? This is for you.
Inspired by blr.today, this project aggregates and lists out all things tech events, so that you don’t have to wait for the stars to align to land up at a fun space
OpenAlgo is a self-hosted platform that makes automating trading orders easy and efficient. Built using the Python Flask Framework, it provides a unified way to execute trades across multiple brokers using your favorite tools.
Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self
Don’t wait for perfect. Ship early, and build openly. The community will shape your project better than any solo roadmap. Also: Document everything, make tutorials and versioning save lives!
Plugging in our regular asks 1. Know someone who should be on this list? Drop their names in the thread here. 2. Think you should be featured? This is for you. 3. Also check out, Maintainer Summit @IndiaFOSS 2025
Data extraction, but FOSS: no subscriptions, no vendor lock-in, just your bots on your turf. For this Forklore Friday, say hellos to Maxun and Karishma Shukla,
At my previous workplace, we needed a no-code extractor but existing tools were pricey, clunky, and code-heavy. I built one over a weekend, open-sourced it, and never looked back.
P.S. - Know someone who should be on this list? Drop their names in the thread here. P.P.S - Think you should be featured? This is for you.
(Also a small note, with IndiaFOSS being only 30 days away, we’ll take a small break from the usual Forklore programming. See you very soon. In the meantime, make sure you have your tickets for the conference, and in case you’ve managed to miss it, Maintainer Summit is happening, check it out)
It spots intrusions, prevents attacks, and monitors traffic with the precision of a bloodhound and the patience of open source, say hello to Sucricata, as the old saying goes, you don’t need a licence key to sleep well at night. Catch the lore straight from one of their maintainers -
As usual, leaving with the pspps P.S. - Know someone who should be on this list? Drop their names in the thread here. P.P.S - Think you should be featured? This is for you.
pysradb is practically a command-line lab assistant, that fetches sequencing data, metadata, and sanity. Turn SRA chaos into clean, ready-to-analyse datasets straight from your terminal, and more.
Biological researchers worldwide generate petabytes of genomic sequencing data, but accessing it is a nightmare. Scientists spend weeks navigating the maze of NCBI’s SRA, ENA, and GEO databases just to find and download the datasets they need. The identifiers are cryptic (SRP? GSE? SRR?), the APIs are complex, and downloading terabytes of data often fails midway or is incomplete without the associated metadata! Pysradb democratizes access to the world’s largest repository of sequencing information.
Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self
When I started, I just thought I need to be the best at coding to be a good maintainer. A good maintainer is not necessarily a good coder, but an all rounder - listens, provides feedback, documents and keeps the community together rather than forcing their ideology over everyone.
Say hello to Hariharan Umapathi, and open-tamil-php — a nascent PHP port of the open-tamil library that makes Tamil text processing easier for developers. Transliteration, tokenisation, sorting, encoding, now in a language your backend speaks too.
Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project?
After waiting around for a solution for this problem that many faced, I decided to start addressing it by trying to fix it. One can always try at the least.
Head to forklore and check out the project in full.
Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self
Less is more. Keep the core tiny, make seams obvious, add observability early, and let patterns emerge—don’t enforce them.
If you can keep asking the question “What is the justification for your existence” to each line of code, to each function, classes, modules. Strip things away. Make it as simple as you can.
For those just joining, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT), is dedicated to humanitarian action and community development through open mapping. One of their tools, Tasking Manager, powers coordinated OpenStreetMap mapping for disaster response, community projects, and data quality efforts.
Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project?
Because while proprietary tools aren’t always accessible, affordable, or adaptable for the communities who need them the most, especially when budgets end or connectivity is limited. Open source gives transparency, local control, and a future where mapping tools don’t disappear just because funding does. It lets technology do good and keep doing good long after we step away.
As usual, leaving with the pspps P.S. - Know someone who should be on this list? Drop their names in the thread here. P.P.S - Think you should be featured? This is for you.
Your team deserves better than 47 WhatsApp groups.
Raven is an open-source team chat that actually scales past “hey, check the last message” and effortlessly integrates with your ERP.
Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self
Don’t build everything and anything that people want you to build. It’s still your own product and you decide what to build - even though it’s open source.
