My journey into open source began over a decade ago when I created the GitHub Changelog Generator.
At that time, it was my first real project written in Ruby — and I couldn’t have imagined how much it would resonate with the community. The project quickly gained momentum, reaching over 6,000 stars, becoming one of GitHub’s trending repositories back then, which felt truly incredible.
As my career evolved and my focus shifted to other projects and various new initiatives — the Changelog Generator was gracefully passed into new hands.
I’m especially grateful to Olle Jonsson, who picked up the project and took it to a new level: improving the codebase, making it more professional, polished, and sustainable.
Olle’s dedication gave the project a second life, and it’s one of the most beautiful feelings in open source — seeing a project grow beyond yourself, like raising a child who eventually becomes independent and thrives on their own.
Here’s a glimpse of the journey captured in our contribution history: https://github.com/github-changelog-generator/github-changelog-generator/graphs/contributors
I’m deeply thankful to every contributor who helped shape this project, adding ideas, bug fixes, improvements, and trust.
Maintaining and contributing to open source is not just about writing code; it’s about creating communities, fostering growth, and building something lasting together.
It’s been one of the most fulfilling parts of my journey as a developer and human being.
How did you get involved with Open Source?
I’ve been involved in Open Source for over 10 years. It all started when I began creating tools for my own needs, and soon these projects found broader adoption. Seeing how my work could help others motivated me to contribute not just to my own projects, but to many other Open Source efforts as well.
What’s Open Source to you?
For me, Open Source is about freedom, community, and shared progress. It’s a space where collaboration fuels innovation, and where everyone has the power to improve and build on each other’s work.
What projects are you involved in?
I’ve created several popular Open Source projects, including:
GitHub Changelog Generator — a tool to automate changelog creation
web3swift — a Swift library for interacting with Ethereum
ActionSheetPicker — a widely used iOS UI component
I also actively contribute to OMI, an innovative wearable AI hardware project that I’m very excited about right now.
How do you grow your community?
By being welcoming, responsive, and maintaining clear contribution guidelines. Good documentation, a friendly tone, and recognizing contributions all help to organically build and sustain a healthy community.
What are the main challenges you face as a maintainer?
One challenge is users who request features or fixes but aren’t willing to contribute themselves — sometimes disappearing after raising issues. Another growing challenge is the influx of AI-generated low-quality pull requests. While automation can help, it also creates a lot of noise and extra review work, often without meaningful contributions.
What are some ways contributors can better support maintainers?
Take the time to read the contribution guidelines carefully
Submit thoughtful, high-quality pull requests
Say “thank you” — appreciation goes a long way!
Where possible, support the project through sponsorship or donations
What are some of the key security practices you’ve implemented in your project?
One key practice is maintaining clear policies for handling sensitive data — such as never committing environment variables or secrets to repositories. Simple but crucial. Additionally, having well-defined contribution and review processes helps catch potential issues early.
What do you think are the biggest security challenges facing Open Source today?
Commitev env vars security remains a major concern.
What’s the impact of AI on Open Source development?
AI has a double-edged impact. On the positive side, it can accelerate contributions and help automate tedious tasks. But it also brings a surge of low-effort, machine-generated pull requests that maintainers must sift through, which adds noise and maintenance burden.
What advice would you give to current and new maintainers?
Stay open, be kind, and treat your contributors the way you would want to be treated. Clear communication, patience, and setting a strong but welcoming project culture are the foundations for long-term success.
Read stories shared by other maintainers.
This story was published under CC BY-SA by the author.