In my first job we did a lot without a build server, we just wrote makefiles and executed them manually. In my next job, we had a build server that was pretty complicated - cruisecontrolnet.org. This was already a huge improvement, but also pretty hard to maintain. So, I started to use Hudson/Jenkins for some private micro-controller projects and finally convinced my boss to try it out. Before contributing to Jenkins, I started by contributing to small embedded projects. But I wanted to contribute to a bigger project, so I checked out Linux Kernel. It felt safe to contribute there since they have a longer process to get things applied. After getting started, Jenkins was more appealing and the low barrier for entry was attractive from the get go.

I started using Hudson in 2010 and switched to Jenkins in 2011. Introducing Jenkins in my team was a huge success and soon other teams started using Jenkins. At that time, I asked my boss how I could give something back during working hours. This request was rejected because of legal concerns. However, I really loved the openness and was curious about how open source really worked, so I started to contribute some not-so-small PRs to Jenkins core.

I really love the openness of the project. I was also able to motivate and help colleagues contribute to Jenkins and other open-source projects, which feels really great. I think open source is a very important part of the software business and Jenkins is a great opportunity to get a really good impression of how it should work. I believe that almost everyone can and should participate in open-source projects.

All my automation challenges were solved with Jenkins. For example, from traditional software building and testing to automating database maintenance or notifications about new tool releases.

The flexibility of Jenkins with this huge number of plugins, over 2500 members, and even more contributors. I joined the Contributor summit at FOSDEM in 2020 in person and that was really great to actually meet others who work on Jenkins. This motivated me a lot to make even more contributions. Meanwhile, I changed my role to a solution architect, where I did not program as much as I would like to. This felt a little bit like Batman: taking a lot of meetings during the day, but doing the right thing at night by providing some contributions to the open-source community, mainly Jenkins. This also helps me keep my feet close to the ground, because I still feel strongly connected to the Jenkins community and their experience when it comes to software development.

I’ve created a lot of quality-related PRs and finally got Jenkins core to zero open SpotBugs issues, with great help from other contributors and maintainers, of course.

Start with a small contribution and you will learn something new with every contribution or review you do. Learn to value older code and try to understand its existence, instead of why it shouldn’t be there. Some community members are very fast in responding, while others take their time and have power reviews. Don’t rush, and since everything is a donation, it feels very good and rewarding.