Open Source Contributions: 2025 Retrospective

2025 was transformative for our open source involvement. What started as occasional contributions evolved into sustained community engagement, project maintainership, and a commitment to giving back to the ecosystem that enables our work.

This retrospective covers what we contributed, what we learned, and how open source shaped our engineering culture.

By the Numbers

Our 2025 open source activity:

Contributions:

• 847 pull requests submitted
• 1,523 issues opened or commented on
• 342 code reviews on external projects
• 89 blog posts about open source tools

Projects maintained:

• 3 projects created and maintained
• 12 projects where we’re core contributors
• 28 projects with regular contributions

Community:

• 2,340 GitHub stars across our projects
• 456 contributors to our repos
• 89 conference talks and meetup presentations
• 1,200+ participants in our Discord server

Impact:

• 15 CVEs fixed in upstream dependencies
• 45 performance improvements merged
• 123 documentation improvements
• 34 new features added to external projects

Major Contributions

Infrastructure and Platform Tools

Kubernetes Contributions

We invested heavily in Kubernetes improvement:

Performance optimization:

• Reduced controller reconciliation latency by 40%
• Improved scheduler throughput for large clusters
• Optimized etcd query patterns

New features:

• Co-authored KEP for dynamic resource allocation
• Implemented PodDisruptionBudget improvements
• Enhanced cluster autoscaler decision logic

Why we contributed: Kubernetes is critical infrastructure. Improvements benefit us directly while helping the entire ecosystem.

Terraform Providers

We maintained and improved several Terraform providers:

AWS Provider:

• Added support for 15 new AWS services
• Fixed critical bugs in state management
• Improved error messages and documentation

Custom providers:

• Built providers for internal tools we later open sourced
• Contributed provider SDK improvements
• Enhanced testing frameworks

Impact: Terraform providers enable infrastructure as code at scale. Our contributions helped thousands of teams manage infrastructure more effectively.

Developer Tools and Libraries

Language Servers and IDE Extensions

Modern development relies on excellent tooling:

TypeScript Language Server:

• Improved autocomplete performance by 60%
• Fixed memory leaks in long-running sessions
• Enhanced error messaging for complex types

VS Code Extensions:

• Created extensions for internal tools
• Contributed to popular extensions we use daily
• Fixed accessibility issues

Observability and Monitoring

OpenTelemetry:

• Implemented new instrumentation libraries
• Improved trace sampling algorithms
• Contributed exporters for new backends

Prometheus:

• Added new metric types
• Improved query performance
• Enhanced alerting rule validation

Grafana:

• Built custom dashboards and panels
• Contributed to data source plugins
• Improved query builder UX

Security and Compliance

Security is everyone’s responsibility:

Dependency Scanning Tools:

• Improved vulnerability detection accuracy
• Reduced false positive rates
• Enhanced reporting and prioritization

Secret Detection:

• Contributed to tools that prevent credential leaks
• Improved pattern matching for various secret types
• Added support for new secret formats

Security Fixes:

• Reported and fixed 15 CVEs in dependencies
• Contributed security patches to upstream projects
• Improved security documentation

Projects We Created and Maintain

Cortex Agent Framework

Our primary open source project, Cortex enables AI-powered workflow orchestration:

2025 highlights:

• Grew from 200 to 2,000+ GitHub stars
• 89 contributors from 23 countries
• 12 releases with major features
• Used in production by 100+ organizations

Community engagement:

• Monthly community calls with 40-60 participants
• Active Discord with 1,200+ members
• Comprehensive documentation with examples
• Video tutorials and workshops

Governance:

• Established contributor guidelines
• Created clear roadmap and RFC process
• Formed steering committee
• Adopted Code of Conduct

Technical achievements:

• 60% performance improvement
• 25+ new integrations
• Enhanced testing and CI/CD
• Improved developer experience

MCP Protocol Libraries

We contributed significantly to Model Context Protocol implementations:

Language support:

• TypeScript/JavaScript library
• Python library improvements
• Go library contributions

Features:

• Type-safe client and server implementations
• Comprehensive test suites
• Performance benchmarks
• Example integrations

Adoption:

• Used by 200+ projects
• 500+ stars across libraries
• Active contributor community

DevTools CLI

A developer productivity tool we open sourced:

What it does:

• Project scaffolding and generation
• Development environment setup
• Common workflow automation
• Integration with popular tools

Community response:

• 800+ stars in first 6 months
• Featured in newsletters and blogs
• Adopted by teams at major companies
• 45 contributors

Contribution Process and Culture

How We Prioritize Contributions

We contribute to projects based on:

Direct impact: Tools we use daily get priority Community need: High-impact improvements for many users Learning opportunity: Contributions that grow our expertise Relationship building: Strengthening ties with key projects

Time Allocation

We dedicate time explicitly:

• 20% time: Engineers spend one day per week on open source
• Maintenance time: Dedicated hours for our own projects
• Community support: Time for Discord, issues, and reviews
• Conference prep: Talks and workshops about our work

Review and Quality Standards

Our contributions maintain high quality:

Before submission:

• Comprehensive testing (unit, integration, e2e)
• Documentation updates
• Changelog entries
• Performance benchmarks where relevant

During review:

• Responsive to feedback
• Willing to iterate
• Respectful of maintainer time and decisions
• Patient with review cycles

Learning and Knowledge Sharing

We share learnings internally:

• Contribution retrospectives: Monthly sharing sessions
• Internal documentation: Best practices and patterns
• Mentorship: Pairing junior engineers with experienced contributors
• Celebration: Recognizing successful contributions

Challenges and Lessons

Maintainer Burnout

As Cortex grew, maintenance became demanding:

Challenges:

• Reviewing pull requests took significant time
• Issues accumulated faster than we could address them
• Community expectations grew
• Work-life balance suffered

Solutions:

• Formed core maintainer team (5 people)
• Established clearer contribution guidelines
• Automated more of the review process
• Set boundaries on response times
• Recruited additional maintainers from community

Lesson: Sustainable maintenance requires multiple maintainers and clear processes.

Breaking Changes and Compatibility

We had to make breaking changes in Cortex v2.0:

Challenges:

• Users depended on old APIs
• Migration was complex
• Community frustration with breaking changes
• Balancing innovation and stability

How we handled it:

• 6-month deprecation period
• Automated migration tools
• Comprehensive migration guide
• Direct support for major users
• Clear communication about rationale

Lesson: Breaking changes require extensive communication and migration support.

Code Quality Standards

Not all contributions met our quality bar:

Challenges:

• Well-intentioned but low-quality PRs
• Explaining standards without discouraging contributors
• Time cost of extensive rework
• Maintaining consistency

Solutions:

• Detailed contribution guidelines
• PR templates with checklists
• Automated quality checks (linting, testing)
• Constructive feedback with examples
• “Good first issue” tags for newcomers

Lesson: Clear standards and automation reduce review burden.

Dependency Management

Open source means depending on other open source:

Challenges:

• Security vulnerabilities in dependencies
• Breaking changes in upstream projects
• Abandoned dependencies
• Conflicting transitive dependencies

Approach:

• Automated dependency updates (Dependabot)
• Regular security audits
• Monitoring for abandoned projects
• Contributing fixes upstream
• Vendor critical dependencies when necessary

Lesson: Dependency management is ongoing work that requires automation and vigilance.

Community Building

Creating Welcoming Spaces

We worked to make our projects approachable:

Documentation:

• Getting started guides for all projects
• Architecture overviews
• API references
• Troubleshooting guides
• Example applications

Communication channels:

• GitHub Discussions for async conversations
• Discord for real-time chat
• Monthly community calls
• Conference presentations

Inclusivity:

• Code of Conduct strictly enforced
• Welcoming attitude toward newcomers
• Recognition of all contributors
• Diverse maintainer team

Recognizing Contributors

We celebrate contributions:

• Contributors page: Listing all contributors with avatars
• Release notes: Crediting contributors explicitly
• Social media: Highlighting contributions on Twitter/LinkedIn
• Swag: Stickers and t-shirts for significant contributors
• Maintainer promotions: Elevating active contributors to maintainer status

Supporting First-Time Contributors

We actively support newcomers:

• Good first issue: Curated list of approachable issues
• Mentorship: Offering guidance to new contributors
• Pair programming: Video calls to work through contributions
• Patient reviews: Detailed feedback on first PRs
• Documentation: Clear contribution process

Results:

• 60% of contributors in 2025 were first-time
• Many first-time contributors became regular contributors
• Positive feedback about welcoming community

Impact on Our Engineering Culture

Open source shaped how we work internally:

Code Quality

Knowing code will be public raised our standards:

• Better documentation (necessary for external users)
• More comprehensive testing (can’t rely on tribal knowledge)
• Clearer architecture (must be understandable to outsiders)
• Security consciousness (public scrutiny)

Collaboration Skills

Contributing to external projects improved collaboration:

• Writing better issue descriptions
• Constructive code review feedback
• Patience with review cycles
• Respectful disagreement

Technical Growth

Open source expanded our expertise:

• Exposure to different codebases and patterns
• Learning from experienced maintainers
• Staying current with ecosystem trends
• Building reputation and network

Hiring and Retention

Open source helped hiring:

• Demonstrated technical capability
• Showcased our culture and values
• Attracted candidates passionate about open source
• Provided meaningful work that engineers valued

Looking Forward to 2026

Goals and Commitments

Project goals:

• Cortex v3.0 with major new capabilities
• 5,000+ GitHub stars across our projects
• 1,000+ contributors to our repositories
• Conference talks at major events

Community goals:

• Launch mentorship program for new contributors
• Establish working groups for major features
• Create detailed video tutorial series
• Host virtual and in-person meetups

Contribution goals:

• 1,000+ pull requests to external projects
• Fix 20+ CVEs in dependencies
• Contribute to 5 new projects
• Support 10 engineers through first open source contributions

Areas of Focus

Security tooling: Contributing to tools that improve security for everyone

Developer experience: Tools that make developers more productive

AI/ML infrastructure: Open source AI tooling and frameworks

Sustainability: Supporting maintainers and reducing burnout

Advice for Others

For Engineers Starting with Open Source

Start small:

• Fix typos in documentation
• Add examples or clarifications
• Report bugs with detailed reproduction steps
• Answer questions in issue trackers

Choose projects wisely:

• Use daily → easier to contribute meaningfully
• Active maintenance → contributions more likely to be merged
• Welcoming community → better first experience

Be patient:

• Maintainers are volunteers (usually)
• Review takes time
• Not all PRs get merged
• Learn from feedback

For Companies Supporting Open Source

Allocate real time:

• Make open source contribution part of job responsibilities
• Don’t expect it to happen in spare time
• Measure and recognize contributions

Maintain strategically:

• Open source core infrastructure
• Tools that differentiate can remain proprietary
• Consider community before open sourcing

Support sustainably:

• Multiple maintainers prevent burnout
• Clear governance prevents conflicts
• Sponsor dependencies financially
• Encourage but don’t mandate contributions

Conclusion

2025 proved that open source involvement is worth the investment. We improved tools we depend on, built relationships with other engineers and companies, grew our technical skills, and contributed to the broader ecosystem.

Open source isn’t just about code - it’s about community, learning, and giving back. The software we build today stands on the shoulders of countless open source contributors. Contributing is how we support that ecosystem and ensure it continues to thrive.

Looking ahead to 2026, we’re committed to expanding our open source work, supporting more contributors, and building tools that benefit everyone.

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Thank you to every contributor who improved our projects, reviewed our code, or supported our community in 2025. Your work makes open source amazing.