A year of stories from the open source community
Open source is built by the contributions of millions of developers worldwide. With a community of 65M+ developers on GitHub alone, it is impossible to track every project, improvement, and breakthrough. In August 2020, The ReadME Project began highlighting the individuals and organizations behind that work — the developers, maintainers, and communities pushing technology forward.
Over the past year, those stories have showcased resilience, ingenuity, and the power of collaboration. A few stand out for the lessons they carry.
Turning underestimation into momentum
Limor Fried's path to founding Adafruit Industries shows how being dismissed can become a driving force. She went on to become the first female engineer featured on the cover of Wired magazine.
Building skills when systems fail
Sonia John bootstrapped her way into coding after hyperinflation hit South Sudan. Today she works as a blockchain developer and advocate for the decentralized web — a reminder that when the world around you shifts, you are not powerless.
Taking the leap into maintenance
Henry Zhu traded a steady job for full-time maintenance of Babel. His story illustrates the kind of leap of faith that open source sustainability sometimes demands.
Opening doors through education
Ada Nduka Oyom founded She Code Africa to give women the tools and training to succeed as developers, proving that access to education should never be a barrier to participation.
What 12,000 developers can do together
Nearly 12,000 developers contributed code that powered NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter — a striking example of how distributed collaboration can push humanity beyond this world.
To keep up with stories celebrating the open source community, subscribe to The ReadME Project newsletter. Developers and story ideas can also be nominated for future coverage.
