Meet the Maintainers | 31 Days, 31 FOSS Maintainers from India

[ashlesh]

Day 1 of Meet the Maintainers!
It’s #MaintainersMonth, the time of year when we celebrate the heroes of open source.
We’re bringing you 31 days, 31 Indian FOSS projects ,
featuring one exceptional maintainer each day.

Kicking things off: Zasper by Prasun Anand

It is fast, it is smart, and unlike your group chat, it actually gets things done.
Swipe to read the story behind it and the person powering it.

read the full story Zasper.pdf (2.5 MB)
Follow us on Mastodon, Instagram, Linkedin if you don’t already.

Come back tomorrow, we’ve got 30 more stories and at least 30 more tries at witty captions.

[ashlesh]

For Day 2 of #MeetTheMaintainers, we bring you

endoflife.date, with Nemo

This project does what vendors often don’t: tell you when their software dies.
Whether you’re a developer, an artist, or just someone who wants to know if that thing you’re using is technically still alive, endoflife.date is your best friend.

Meet Nemo, the maintainer who makes the end of life a lot easier to live with

Q: A small brief about the project

endoflife.date is an informational website that tracks support cycles and release schedules of over 340 products. Not all product websites can easily answer the question: "How long is this product supported?

Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

Document tribal knowledge and decision rationale, so newer maintainers can learn from previous mistakes and attempts.

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

Because Aaron Swartz would have loved it.

Q: How can someone support your project?

1. You can help us by adding a new product - Contributing | endoflife.date
2. You can sponsor us via Open Collective or GitHub Sponsors at Sponsor @endoflife-date on GitHub Sponsors · GitHub or https://opencollective.com/endoflife-date
3. Tell us if your organization is using the endoflife.date data or APIs - Known Users · endoflife-date/endoflife.date Wiki · GitHub. Drop us a mail at nemo@endoflife.date

We track it, and showcase exact dates along with a concise summary of the release policy. The complete website is open-source, and we are always working to make it better. We have been doing this since 2019, as a collective effort involving over 500 contributors"

Q: Which file in your project would you most like to set on fire?

/products/omnissa-horizon.

Broadcom recently acquired VMWare, but this acquisition did not include the VMWare End-User Computing division, which made a product called VMWare Horizon. This division was sold to a private equity firm called KKR, which renamed it to Omnissa. Since we track Horizon, I added this 600 word text to the page:

After Broadcom’s acquisition of VMWare,
Broadcom divested the End-User Computing Division
(which includes Horizon) to KKR
and branded it as Omnissa as part of the restructuring - which is still in process.
Omnissa and Broadcom have entered into a reseller agreement enabling EUC to offer the ““combined offering””
versions of Horizon SaaS and Horizon Term SKUs with vSphere Foundation for VDI. This
combined offering will be available
in both Named User and Concurrent User license metrics and for 1-, 3-, and 5-year terms.
EUC has no plans to increase Horizon list prices beyond normal annual adjustments.

Writing the above 600 words took me roughly 3 hours, because neither of the companies involved (VMWare, KKR, Omnissa, Broadcom) make it easy to get the above information. I wouldn’t still set on fire though, because this information needs to be more accessible.

And, that’s a wrap for today, see you tomorrow, with another FOSS Maintainer story from India

[ashlesh]

For Day 3 of MeetTheMaintainers, we bring you a big one
Kubernetes with Divya Mohan

Kubernetes (a.k.a. K8s if you’re cool or have a train to catch) is the platform that quietly runs apps across the cloud, wrangles containers like a pro, and still manages to confuse engineers at least once a week.

Meet Divya, one of the maintainers making sure your cloud doesn’t spontaneously combust.

Q: A small brief about the project

Kubernetes - Open source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Currently housed under the CNCF.

Q:One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

Bias for action, always. It took me a while to recognise this, but it has always held me in good stead as a contributor and a maintainer thereafter.

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

As someone who worked in a corporate setup earlier, I found it hard to understand why certain things in my tool or framework were how they were, especially since a significant portion of most applications we use depend on open source. While maintaining open source projects offers me that perspective, it is my aim to raise awareness of how this is done through the platforms/avenues I have access to so that we can collectively do it better and help build technology that’s truly representative of the people it serves.

Q: How can someone support your project?

We’re always looking out for technical and non-technical contributors to help us with project sustenance and continuity. If contributing to the open source ecosystem is on your radar, please reach out to us & we’d be glad to point you to the relevant resources.

Q:If your repo had a theme song, what would it be?

While open source already has its theme song by Richard Stallman, The Free Software Song, I think Imagine by John Lennon speaks to the ethos of open source being a borderless, collaborative ecosystem.

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

It’d be a custom emoji referring to the This is fine meme by web comic artist, KC Green.

Stay tuned for more stories this #MaintainerMay, as we bring you
31 days of 31 FOSS Maintainers from India

[ashlesh]

Day 4 of #MeetTheMaintainers
Introducing, DictPress by @knadh
because preserving languages shouldn’t require preserving 12 tabs of Stack Overflow.

Dictpress is a no-fuss tool for building and hosting dictionaries. It’s fast, elegant, and unlike most things in tech, it actually does one thing really well.

Say hello to Kailash — a maintainer proving that simplicity still scales.

Q: A small brief about the project

dictpress is a webserver application for building and publishing fast, searchable dictionaries for any language.

Q:One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

Learn to say No confidently, where warranted.

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

I love doing it. I find it joyful and satisfying.

Q: Which file in your project would you most like to set on fire?

None. I put in effort to not have inflammable files.

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

Q: How can someone support your project?

Use it to build dictionaries, glossaries etc.

And that’s a wrap for today, see you tomorrow, with another #MaintainerMay story

[ashlesh]

If you’ve ever tried to move an eBook between devices and felt like you were defusing a bomb, today’s maintainer is your hero. | Day 5 of #MeetTheMaintainers

Meet, Calibre, by the OG, Kovid Goyal

Calibre is the world’s leading open-source tool for managing eBooks outside the walled gardens. It can view, edit, convert and organise your library across dozens of formats, NO vendor lock-ins, NO DRM tantrums, NO mysterious “ syncing errors”.

Used by millions across the globe, Calibre is basically the librarian who actually lets you touch the rare books (and maybe even fix their formatting).

Meet Kovid, the maintainer who’s kept your eBooks free since before Kindle had ads.

Q:A small brief about your project

calibre is the leading solution for managing your ebooks outside all walled gardens. It can view,edit,convert dozens of ebook formats and is used by millions of people from around the
world.

Q:One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

Ignore the trolls and do not take it personally.

Q: How can someone support your project?

calibre - Donate to calibre or Github Sponsors.

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

I love to code and open source is the way I can spend the largest fraction of my day, every day coding. And there is nothing quite like the joy you get from building something used by millions of people to make the world a very slightly better place.

Q:If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

That’s a wrap for today. If you have any feedback on how the campaign is going so far, please bother us here or on the telegram/matrix community See you tomorrow for another #MaintainerMay story.

[ashlesh]

Feluda, a name borrowed from a detective, for a tool that investigates the internet.

Built by the folks at Tattle, Feluda helps researchers and fact-checkers sift through massive piles of content: text, images, video, audio, memes, even weird hybrids, across multiple languages.

For Day 6 of #MeetTheMaintainers, say hi to Aatman, one of the maintainers behind Feldu, giving misinformation a hard time. In five languages.

Q: A small brief about your project

Feluda is a configurable engine for analyzing multi-lingual and multi-modal content. It allows researchers, factcheckers and journalists to explore and analyze large quantities of multimedia content. Feluda has a component called operators , which are built keeping in mind the need to process data in various modalities (text, audio, video, images, hybrid) and various languages.

Q: How can someone support your project?

Sponsor @tattle-made on GitHub Sponsors · GitHub

Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

One thing I would tell my younger self is - “you don’t have to feel the pressure to always reply immediately”. It’s easy to feel like you need to be constantly available, you want to be helpful, responsive, and keep the momentum going. But over time, I’ve learned that it’s okay to take a step back, take my time and only respond in the bandwidth I have with better clarity than speed.

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

I have always been drawn to understand how new technologies and practices shape the web, specifically social media, examine their impact on human lives, and the broader societal consequences of this interplay. I am interested in studying trends and behaviors on social media. Feluda is just the right tool which helps me do that, so maintenance of Feluda for me is just more than a chore, it makes my day to day work easy and I get to actively contribute to it. It gives me the opportunity to actively participate in conversations around what models, methods, and techniques should be prioritized for multimodal and multilingual analysis.

Q: If your repo had a theme song, what would it be?

Jaane Jaan Dhoondta Phir Raha by Kishore Kumar & Asha Bhosle - https://youtu.be/V3tB5Wu2ifg. (side note), the background song for our repo would be The Pink Panther Theme - https://youtu.be/VyZiIuMufTA

Q: Which file in your project would you most like to set on fire?

Since Python does not have any tool/action that can do semantic versioning for multiple packages in a monorepo, we wrote a custom script for it - feluda/scripts/semantic_release_workflow.py at main · tattle-made/feluda · GitHub.
The code is very complicated and long, I always keep praying that this code should not break and it always keeps me on my toes. Hence, this is the file I would like to set on fire.

Q: What’s your open-source villain origin story?

We’ve noticed a growing number of contributions to the repository that appear to be entirely AI-generated. Unfortunately, many of these include incorrect or buggy code, and a lot of the times there is hallucinated code about things in the codebase that don’t exist at all. The amount of superficial contributions enabled by AI has increased.
This is my open source villain origin story and I see my villain character being a super paranoid maintainer who pin points every code of line that is frivolous and hallucinated by AI. It’s like how every housing society has that one person who is annoyed by children playing all the time — except in this case, it’s me and AI Slop PRs.

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

Almost a week into #MaintainerMay, and we’ve got lot more in store, stick around

[ashlesh]

Day 7 of #MeetTheMaintainers

Meet, CARE, and Bodhish Thomas

What happens when a pandemic hits and you realize most hospital software is either paid, broken, or both? You build your own. And you make it open-source.

Created by the team at Open Healthcare Network, this platform manages everything from ICU beds to ambulance dispatch to multilingual patient records. It’s been deployed in several Indian states and scaled in the middle of a healthcare crisis.

Q: A small brief about your project

Care is the flagship open-source healthcare platform developed by Open Healthcare Network (OHC). Originally launched during the COVID-19 pandemic as a crisis response tool, Care has evolved into a robust Digital Public Good (DPG) recognized by the United Nations. It is now a comprehensive Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system tailored for critical care, TeleICU, and palliative care, is fully integrated with India’s ABDM (Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission) and FHIR R5 compliant. Deployed in over 200+ hospitals across nine Indian states, Care supports real-time patient monitoring, medical device integration, and AI-powered tools. Today, Care is powering large-scale health programs like the 10BedICU project and Kerala’s Palliative Care Grid, supporting hundreds of thousands of patients, and helping scale compassionate, quality care to underserved regions.

Q: How can someone support your project?

CARE Contributor's Guide | OHC Docs

Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

The community doesn’t grow on ideals, it grows on working code. Someone out there needs what you’re building, Don’t wait for perfect, ship what’s useful.

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

It isn’t just code - it’s tools saving lives across India

Q: If your repo had a theme song, what would it be?

If CARE had a soundtrack, that launch video would be track one
https://youtu.be/ycVWqvZubiI?si=FJ6wcXnN_GQ4t7BK

Q: Which file in your project would you most like to set on fire?

A lot to be honest, we are not just a project its a lot of projects working together as one engine.

Q: What’s your open-source villain origin story?

It was March 2020. We were in shorts, hacking dashboards during a lockdown, with no roadmap, and no idea how many lives would depend on our code. We saw government systems running on Google Sheets and WhatsApp forwards. We didn’t choose the FOSS life. The FOSS life picked us.

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

[ashlesh]

Day 8 of #MeetTheMaintainers

Today’s project is Kitty, a terminal emulator that doesn’t just purr; it roars.

Built by Kovid Goyal (yes, the same mind behind Calibre), Kitty is a cross-platform, GPU-accelerated terminal. It’s lightweight, scriptable, and customizable down to the pixel.

Meet the maintainer who’s redefining what a terminal can be.

Q: A small brief about your project

kitty is a terminal emulator known for pushing the boundaries of what is possible in this ecosystem, with features like extended keyboard support, graphics, text sizing, remote control, etc.

Q: How can someone support your project?

Github Sponsors - GitHub - kovidgoyal/kitty: Cross-platform, fast, feature-rich, GPU based terminal

Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

Ignore the trolls and do not take it personally.

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

I love to code and open source is the way I can spend the largest fraction of my day, every day coding. And there is nothing quite like the joy you get from building something used by millions of people to make the world a very slightly better place.

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

[ashlesh]

Day 9 of #MeetTheMaintainers.

Today’s project is Dalgo, the data platform that NGOs didn’t know they needed until Excel started gaslighting them.

Built by Project Tech4Dev, Dalgo is an open-source platform that automates data consolidation, storage, and visualization and so much moreee. It’s the kind of thing that makes messy data actually useful, and makes your analyst stop crying in meetings? ykwim

Meet the maintainers who are making data work for those who work for others.

Q: A small brief about your project

Dalgo is an open-source data platform for the nonprofit sector

Q: How can someone support your project?

More contributions!

Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

Start collecting good first issues early! Don’t knock them off just because you can

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

All our components are FOSS, we want our work to be public as well! It’s all right if people don’t run our platform, just having the code out there helps people too

Q: If your repo had a theme song, what would it be?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgYSUYamucI

Q: Which file in your project would you most like to set on fire?

Probably the Jest tests

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

[ashlesh]

Day 10 of #MeetTheMaintainers, say hello to CircuitVerse and Aboobacker MK

CircuitVerse is an online playground where you can build digital circuits, test them, and maybe even understand what a flip-flop does.

It’s a free, open-source, web-based tool that lets you build and test digital logic circuits right in your browser. No setup. No licenses. No tears. Educators use it to run classes. Students use it to experiment and break things safely. And hobbyists use it because breadboards don’t come with an undo button.

Meet Aboobacker MK, the maintainer turning complex concepts into interactive learning experiences.

Q: A small brief about your project

CircuitVerse is a free and open-source, web-based digital logic circuit simulator.

1. It provides an intuitive platform for users of all levels to create, simulate, and learn about digital circuits without the need for any software installation.
2. Beyond simulation, CircuitVerse fosters a collaborative environment where users can share their creations, learn from others, and even allows educators to create assignments and groups.
3. The project aims to build a strong community around digital logic education, making it accessible to students, professionals, and hobbyists worldwide

Q: How can someone support your project?

You can make contributions as code, documentation, localization or money / CircuitVerse - Open Collective

Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

Consistency is everything

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

It helped me to become who I am today

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

[ashlesh]

Day 11 of #MeetTheMaintainers

Meet Glific, built by Tech4Dev, it helps nonprofits run massive, automated conversations in multiple languages, with real-time tracking and logic that fits their workflows.

It’s open-source, low-code, and designed for people who don’t have the time (or budget) for enterprise software.

Say hello to Shijith K, one of the maintainers building tech that doesn’t make nonprofits choose between scale and sanity.

Q: A small brief about your project

Glific is an open source platform built to cater to the needs of the social sector, enabling two-way communication.
Non profits can use Glific to send high-quality, relevant and timely information to their communities at a low cost. Glific aims to empower social impact organisations to act decisively and quickly on grassroots information through a range of features ranging from automated responses to comprehensive analytics.
Glific has been developed under Project Tech4Dev initiative of Chintu Gudiya Foundation, by multiple Tech4Dev partners in India working on the platform as core teams such as ColoredCow, Web Access, Soft Corner, and Think201 along with many contributors.

Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

Don’t try to build everything yourself, ask for help, ask people who are interested to contribute. The bigger the community, the better. Don’t be attached to the code you write, or be stubborn on your solutions, the community will always give you better solutions so be ready to listen.

Q: How can someone support your project?

More contributions, Buy Me a Cofee, Github Sponsors, etc. Any support is welcome

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

Because almost everything I build stands on the foundation of open source—languages, libraries, tools—all made possible by the work of others who chose to share. Giving back feels like the natural next step.
The project I maintain is built for the social sector—organizations and individuals working on real-world challenges, often with limited resources. Open sourcing it makes it accessible to those who need it most. If my work can help them do their work better, that’s a win worth all the effort.

Q: If your repo had a theme song, what would it be?

One Love - Bob Marley

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

[ashlesh]

Day 12 of #MeetTheMaintainers

Most of us just hit “update” and hope the internet cooperates.
Shrirang Kahale made sure it does.

Meet Albony, a student-run mirror network that hosts fast, reliable copies of open-source projects like Arch, Ubuntu, and F-Droid, all from servers based in India.

Sure, it’s faster. But more than that, mirrors like Albony make the entire open-source ecosystem more stable, accessible, and sustainable.

Meet the maintainer quietly giving users faster updates, fewer errors, and less shouting at the screen

Q: A small brief about your project

mirror.albony.in provides CDN infra for various opensource projects and linux distributions, this is a student run service which serves 20TB+ traffic daily and thousands rely on it to get their latest opensource software…

Q: How can someone support your project?

ALBONY.XYZ MIRROR / Donate

Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

You can only connect the dots while looking backwards.

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

I have an inner urge to contribute to FOSS in anyway I can, those traffic spikes on my servers keep me going

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

:}

[ashlesh]

Day 13 of #MeetTheMaintainers

Even if you’ve never touched PHP, you’ve probably seen someone yelling at it on GitHub.

setup-php by Shivam Mathur is what stands between those folks and complete CI meltdown. It helps developers set up PHP environments cleanly on GitHub Actions, no matter how weird their stack is.

It’s used by thousands of projects and saves countless hours of swearing per week.

Built, maintained, and obsessively tuned by one person.
Meet Shivam — the guy who turned PHP on CI from “ugh, not again” into “done in 30 seconds”.

Q: A small brief about your project

GitHub action to set up PHP with extensions, php.ini configuration, coverage drivers, and various tools.

Q: How can someone support your project?

GitHub Sponsors / Sponsor @shivammathur on GitHub Sponsors · GitHub

Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

“Ship early, ship often”: I do not like to wait for covering every edge case before publishing, rather I would invite real users in, learn from their feedback, and iterate.

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

Every thank-you comment, PR, or bug report reminds me that open source is a team sport—and that sense of community keeps me going.

Q: If your repo had a theme song, what would it be?

Its is a bit dramatic, but Eminem - Lose Yourself

Q: Which file in your project would you most like to set on fire?

setup-php/src/configs/tools.json at main · shivammathur/setup-php · GitHub
I would like to build a proper registry where projects can register their tools to add support in a standard way.

Q: What’s your open-source villain origin story?

It began with a burnout at a devops role implementing the same thing across different projects and it taking a long time due to how broken the tooling was before setup-php to implement PHP CI.

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

[ashlesh]

Day 14 of #MeetTheMaintainers

You: “This doc is a screenshot of a scanned table embedded in a zip file inside an email.”
Also you: “Let me just write a parser for that real quick.”
Also also you:

OmniParse, by Adithya, is here to stop the madness.

It’s an open-source framework for turning unstructured, multi-format content into clean, structured data — made for researchers, analysts, and anyone tired of reinventing the parsing wheel.

Built to be flexible, pluggable, and surprisingly civilised. Meet Adithya!

Q: A small brief about your project

Omniparse - An open-source framework with 6k GitHub stars that scales the conversion of unstructured data into structured data. It is designed to handle a wide variety of data formats, offering unparalleled flexibility and scalability.

Q: How can someone support your project?

Sponsor @adithya-s-k on GitHub Sponsors · GitHub

Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

One lesson I’d tell my younger self: You can’t always build something big in a weekend, but you can build something big by committing every weekend. Be patient, stay consistent, and trust the process.

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

I’ve learned so much from reading and understanding open-source code—it’s where I picked up best practices, libraries, and real-world problem solving. Maintaining FOSS projects is my way of giving back to that community. It also lets me build high-impact tools that people actually use, and it’s one of the fastest ways to validate and iterate on startup ideas in the real world.

Q: If your repo had a theme song, what would it be?

Never Gonna Give You Up | Song by Rick Astley ‧ 1987

Q: Which file in your project would you most like to set on fire?

currently the enteir v1 of omniparse , v2 coming out soon

Q: What’s your open-source villain origin story?

I built tools to solve my own problems, shared them online, and realized others found them useful too. That’s how my open-source journey and Cognitivelab began.

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

[ashlesh]

Day 15 of #MeetTheMaintainers

Today’s maintainer, Aditi, works on NetworkX, the go-to Python library for exploring complex networks, from social graphs to supply chains to “how many degrees from Tabu, really?”

And because scale never sleeps, she also maintains nx-parallel, a fork that adds parallelism to NetworkX.

Meet Aditi, the graph whisperer helping your code think in networks

Q: A small brief about your project

nx-parallel is a backend for NetworkX, a widely used pure-Python library for graph analysis. While NetworkX includes hundreds of useful algorithms (like TSP, PageRank, Dijkstra’s shortest paths, etc.) it can get really slow on large graphs since it runs on a single CPU core. nx-parallel accelerates these algorithms using joblib, running them in parallel across multiple CPU cores, threads, or nodes—depending on the parallel backend.
To use it as a backend, simply pass backend="parallel" to supported NetworkX functions (e.g. nx.all_pairs_dijkstra(G, backend="parallel")), or input a nxp.ParallelGraph object instead of nx.Graph, or set the environment variable NETWORKX_BACKEND_PRIORITY="parallel".

Q: How can someone support your project?

You can contribute to the projects by using them and giving feedback, resolving issues, fixing bugs, getting involved in the discussions. And you can also contribute financially as a GitHub sponsor: NetworkX · GitHub . You can also hire me so that I can donate the time I spend on looking for opportunities into nx-parallel and networkx instead

Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

Concentrate more on the "why"s instead of "how"s, and don’t burn yourself out-- take breaks!

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

I get to learn new things, work with nice people and I like working on something that’s useful to people, and helping in making it better. Also, I just don’t want this project(nx-parallel) to be abandoned and archived someday – I want to build a sustainable community of users, contributors and maintainers around it

Q: If your repo had a theme song, what would it be?

Bach’s Prelude in C Major

Q: Which file in your project would you most like to set on fire?

Timing script: nx-parallel/timing/timing_all_functions.py at main · networkx/nx-parallel · GitHub

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

[ashlesh]

Day 16 of #MeetTheMaintainers

Your computer knows you have 10,000 images . What it doesn’t know is which one has your cat’s first birthday party, or that one screenshot of you being good at flirting on text a decade ago.

Hachi, built by Anubhav/eagledot, is a local search tool for your media.

It understands what’s in your files, so you can search “thirst trap” and actually find it.(i kid, but you get it). It’s tidy, smart, and doesn’t send your data to a server farm in another country.

Swipe to meet the maintainer helping you find stuff, no cloud required.

Q: A small brief about your project

Hachi is an end to end semantic and meta-data search engine for personal data. It enables a comprehensive search by extracting independent information channels/attributes and providing a unified interface to mix and match those attributes. It also supports a high quality and fast face-recognition pipeline to tag and search a person.

Q: How can someone support your project?

Bug Reports are very welcomed.
For financial contributions you can buy me a coffee at : https://buymeacoffee.com/eagledot

Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

Reading code from high-quality projects more early on, as good ideas/concepts transcend all pseudo boundaries imposed by job-descriptions, curriculum etc !

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

I find it to be satisfying and joyful. It is also a way for me improve my knowledge and hopefully contribute something useful back to the open-source !
Making improvements to a non-trivial problem by reading and experiments generally keeps me going.

Q: If your repo had a theme song, what would it be?

“Two steps from Hell” soundtrack may be!

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

More like a gif:

[ashlesh]

Day 17 of #MeetTheMaintainers

You know that feeling when you just want to test an API, and the client asks you to log in, sync to the cloud, and maybe sell your soul?

Meet Bruno by Anoop M D, the quiet alternative: open-source, offline-first, and built to store everything in tidy .bru files that actually play nice with version control.

No bloat. No telemetry. Just you and your APIs, like it should be.
Say hello to Anoop, the maintainer making “minimal” feel like a power move.

Q: A small brief about your project

Bruno is a local-only, Git-friendly, and open-source API client built for modern developers. Unlike other tools that rely on cloud-based collaboration, Bruno leverages Git to enable seamless sharing and version control of API collections. We’re rethinking the API client experience by focusing solely on what matters—providing a fast, lightweight, and focused tool without the unnecessary bloat that comes with bundled platforms.

Q: How can someone support your project?

Give Bruno a spin and drop us your feedback. It’s the simplest and most impactful way to support the project.

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

I love building things. And with Bruno, it’s even more fulfilling to see developers love what we make.

Q: If your repo had a theme song, what would it be?

We don’t talk about Bruno, no, no, no
We don’t talk about Bruno
But it was my wedding day (it was our wedding day)
We were getting ready, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky
(No clouds allowed in the sky)
Bruno walks in with a mischievous grin (thunder)
You’re telling this story, or am I?

This is from the movie Encanto.

Q: What’s your open-source villain origin story?

I was fed up with bloated API clients and their cloud-based approach to collaboration. All I wanted was something fast, minimal, and Git-native for managing API collections. So I built it myself.

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

[ashlesh]

Day 18 of #MeetTheMaintainers

Meet SciPy and Gagandeep Singh,

Trying to do serious maths in Python without SciPy is like trying to bake a cake with a fork and vibes. SciPy handles the tough stuff, solving equations, crunching data, doing science, etc so you don’t have to reinvent calculus on a Monday.

Say hello to Gagandeep, one of the maintainers delivering you research-grade results without the research-grade sleep schedule. (personally my fav meet so far)

Q: A small brief about your project

SciPy is an open-source Python library that extends the capabilities of NumPy to provide advanced scientific and technical computing tools. It offers modules for optimization, integration, interpolation, eigenvalue problems, algebraic equations, and more, making it a cornerstone for scientific research and engineering applications in Python. Built for performance and ease of use, SciPy enables users to solve complex mathematical problems with concise, readable code. The library is actively developed on GitHub, where its source code, documentation, and development discussions are maintained, and it remains a fundamental part of the scientific Python ecosystem.

Q: How can someone support your project?

Contributions are always welcome to any of the projects I work on.

Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

If I could motivate my younger self, I would say, “Believe in yourself more and have the courage to contribute to larger open-source projects, like PyTorch or TensorFlow.”

I think when we start out, there’s this fear that we’re not good enough to contribute to bigger, well-established projects. But true growth comes when we step out of our comfort zones and contribute to challenging projects. Working on such projects not only improves your coding skills but also gives you the opportunity to understand the project’s ecosystem, interact with the global community, and express your ideas more effectively.

I’d also tell my younger self, “Turn your doubts into strengths; you’ll learn something from every contribution, no matter how small or big.”. Contributing to large projects like PyTorch helps you improve not only your technical skills but also your understanding of real-world software engineering practices, debugging, code reviews, and collaboration skills.

This bravery would not only help in technical growth but also boost your confidence and self-belief. Many times, we think we need years of experience to contribute to big projects, but once we start contributing, we learn and enhance our skills.

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

I initially started contributing to open-source for GSoC and to gain recognition within the community. At that time, it felt like a great opportunity to build my portfolio and get my name out there. However, over time, my perspective has shifted. Now, I contribute to open-source purely for the enjoyment it brings and the freedom it offers. I love the fact that I can work on the problems I’m genuinely passionate about, without any external pressure or expectation. The beauty of open-source is that I can keep all of my code open for everyone to see and contribute to. It’s no longer just about recognition; it’s about the freedom to explore, learn, and grow through the projects I work on. In a way, my open-source contributions have become my CV, showcasing not only my technical abilities but also my dedication to creating meaningful, open, and accessible software.

Q: If your repo had a theme song, what would it be?

All three of my projects are related to Sciences so I would go for, “Cornfield Chase – Hans Zimmer” from “Interstellar”. That’s what I feel when I work on these projects. :-).

Q: Which file in your project would you most like to set on fire?

All the Fortran code.

Q: What’s your open-source villain origin story?

In my first year of college, I proposed a project for GSoC to integrate complex functions into SciPy’s integrate module, specifically focusing on complex numbers since we were studying that topic in our second-semester course. However, the community rejected my proposal, so I took the same idea to SymPy. There, it was also rejected, but Aaron Meurer, SymPy’s maintainer, encouraged me to try again the following year. So, I began contributing to SymPy. I worked on fixing a solver issue in SymPy, as far as I remember, and then I moved on to fix more issues. While working, I came across the idea of Markov chains in the stats module, and I really liked it. I started working on a proposal and ended up submitting several pull requests to the stats module.

Eventually, three proposals came in for the same idea, so the mentor decided to test us. Luckily, two of us were selected. I was thrilled when the results came in at 11:30 PM, and the first thing I did was call my mom. She was also happy. It had been a long time since anyone from our college had cracked GSoC.

Anyway, I worked on the project and learned a lot from my mentor—the math and algorithms I created for SymPy’s Markov chains were very fun. Then, GSoC turned into something bigger, and I started enjoying it more. Later, Ondrej (the founder of SymPy) reached out to me for another project, LFortran. This was last year, and I had my second GSoC there. In the meantime, Ondrej also recommended me to Quansight (where I started contributing to SciPy), and since then, I’ve been involved in these projects.

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

- Construction sign emoji. Open source is all about constructing in the open.

[ashlesh]

Day 19 of #MeetTheMaintainers

Your servers are shouting a million things, and you’re supposed to make sense of it all, without losing your mind. Good luck.

Enter LogChef, the minimalist log butler built by Karan Sharma, who decided log chaos deserved a neat, no-nonsense solution. It ships your logs straight to ClickHouse without the usual drama.

Think of it as the Macrodata Refinement of log management, sorting through the noise with eerie calm, no melon bars required.

Meet Karan, the guy quietly saving your sanity, one log line at a time.

Q: A small brief about your project

Logchef is a dedicated log query and visualization interface built specifically for ClickHouse. It fills a critical gap in the ClickHouse ecosystem, providing a powerful log explorer without reinventing log collection or storage.

Q: How can someone support your project?

Sponsor @mr-karan on GitHub Sponsors · GitHub

Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

Build what sparks your curiosity. Even if similar tools already exist, your unique perspective can add something valuable. Don’t wait for perfection - share your work with the world as it evolves.

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

For me, open-sourcing the project brings in more eyes, suggestions, and issues - ultimately improving the software far more than if it were closed. I use a lot of self-hosted FOSS tools myself, and it would be incredibly fulfilling to see others using and benefiting from something I’ve built too.

Q: If your repo had a theme song, what would it be?

Welcome to the Machine - Pink Floyd

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?

[ashlesh]

Day 20 of #MeetTheMaintainers

Your phone knows exactly what your cat looked like in 2018, but somehow you still can’t find that photo unless you sacrifice your privacy to the Algorithm Gods.

Enter Ente the encrypted photo storage that doesn’t snitch. Built by Vishnu and the team at ente.io, it’s open source, end-to-end encrypted (yes, even the metadata), and fully offline-capable.

No mystery AI albums. No “oops, we trained a model on your vacation pics”

Meet Vishnu, one of the maintainers building a photo vault that remembers your memories, not your ad preferences.

Q: A small brief about your project

FOSS, End-to-end encrypted cloud for photos, videos and more.

Q: How can someone support your project?

Github stars

Q: One FOSS maintainer lesson for your younger self

You cannot keep everyone happy.

Q: Why do you do it? Why do you bother maintaining a FOSS project? What keeps you going?

Ente is a project I started for myself, that grew into a financially sustainable company. So among other things, there’s now a financial incentive to keep building. As for keeping things FOSS – we believe it’s the best way to ensure that a project outlives its creators.

Q: If your repo had a theme song, what would it be?

Speaking only for myself (and not rest of the maintainers): Manavyalakinchara – Agam.

Q: Which file in your project would you most like to set on fire?

.gitmodules – submodules are terrible.

Q: If you had to use one emoji to convey what it is like to be a FOSS maintainer, what would it be?