Meet the Maintainer: Yash Sharma

Thanks for having me, Hargun, I got into open source about two years ago, not really expecting to get so wrapped up in it. I found Layer5 and the community through a Twitter post and thought, "Why not?" So, I jumped in. The more I got involved, the more I saw how pumped the team and maintainers were about Meshery and helping others, and it just got me hooked. I started with some smaller, more routine issues but quickly moved on to bigger challenges and started getting recognized. One time, during a meeting, Lee said something that stuck with me, it’s become one of my go-to quotes. He was like, "You don't start working like a maintainer after becoming one, you act like a maintainer and do the work before you're promoted." That really clicked for me. So I started thinking like a maintainer, doing the stuff that isn’t always glamorous but really matters. Eventually, I took on more responsibilities, and before I knew it, I became a maintainer.

Honestly, being a maintainer is about taking responsibility for a big part of the project with taking care of small things too at the same time, and I really enjoy that. One of my favourite things about it is that it lets me think more broadly about what we’re doing. As a contributor, you often focus on the details, but as a maintainer, you get to step back and see the bigger picture, which is super rewarding.

I’ve contributed to other open source projects, but I didn’t really get a chance to get involved deeply. I think it’s mostly because a lot of those projects don’t have an active community, which makes it tough to get involved. However, when I joined Layer5, everything changed. I quickly figured out how to start contributing, and the community managers were super helpful and always around to give a hand. You just don’t see that kind of support in a lot of other open source projects.

Absolutely, Layer5 has a number of active open source projects, and I’ve contributed to quite a few of them. But my main focus has been on Meshkit, Sistent, Meshery Extensions, and, of course, Meshery itself.

Haha good one, this year I got a chance to represent Meshery at KubeCon which was really an amazing experience for me. I gave a demo of Kanvas and during representation and during that I was collaborating with another user which really showed Meshery’s capability.

Meshery is an extensible platform and I like this feature of it, it gives Meshery a whole new powerful capability to interact with various technologies in the ecosystem and use it as an extension. My favourite one is Kanvas, though.

I definitely encourage you to join the meetings. They’re a great way to connect with the maintainers in real time. Text chats just don’t do it justice when it comes to letting them really get to know you. Video calls are way better for that and give you a chance to show yourself to the project leaders and maintainers.

Meshery is growing very fast, it is the 9th fastest growing project under CNCF. There are many opportunities open for you to contribute. Start with joining community, introducing yourself and sharing your skill. This will help community managers to put you in right direction based on your skills. All areas are consistently in need of help, including best at this time to contribute like Meshery's CLI client, Meshery Server and digital marketing.
Out of a 100+ repos that the Layer5 community stewards, two are currently closed: Kanvas and Cloud. Both of these projects were created and are actively being developed by open source contributors, though. There are ~15 open source contributors who working on it now, who meet daily. New contributors in the community routinely express interest and are invited to participate, and are extremely well supported as they do. In other words, the source is currently closed (subject to change), but any community member here that shows interest, demonstrates competence and consistency of participation is readily invited to join in.
The core team working on these two projects meets Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri at 9:00am Central / 7:30pm IST on meet.layer5.io/team. You are most encouraged and welcome to partake.
Between the two projects, ~100 different contributors have helped create these two project to date. This list of repositories and the expandable note on the page offers some additional context as well.

I’d definitely recommend reading 'Six Easy Pieces' by Richard Feynman. It’s a fantastic book, especially if you’re a science lover like me, haha.

Good question, I’d say think about the long-term. People are more likely to invest in you if they see you’re committed for the long term. If you seem like you’re just looking for a quick win, it sends a message to the maintainers that they might not want to put too much into you. And of course try to make high-quality contributions; it doesn't matter if it’s small or big.

You summarized it perfectly, yes I agree with you Hargun.