GitHub today announced the ReadME Project, a new space designed to share and highlight open-source stories that are moving humanity forward. According to the company, while 99% of the software that powers the world is built on open-source code, the maintainers and developers of the code often go unnoticed.
“We read a lot about the preeminence of software, less so about the communities of people pouring their efforts and passions into it,” Brian Douglas, senior developer advocate at GitHub, wrote in a post. “Today, and throughout the coming months, you’ll read stories of personal growth, professional challenges, and lessons learned—the journeys you might not see behind projects you probably use every day.”
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Open-source users can nominate inspiring developers to be highlighted. Among the first highlighted developers include:
- Henry Zhu: Full-time maintainer for Babel,
- Samson Goddy: Open-source advocate, Sugar Labs maintainer, Open Source Collective board member and co-founder of Open Source Community Africa,
- Sonia John: Blockchain developer
- Ovilia Zhang: Data visualization developer and full-time maintainer for Apache ECharts
- and Dirk Lemstra: ImageMagick maintainer and Magick.NET creator
“We hope you take something constructive from these personal profiles and merge it with your own story. Open source is incredible, uplifting, and collaborative, but it’s also imperfect. All of us can learn from the creativity, grit, and perseverance of the individuals who build it,” Douglas wrote. “The ReadME Project features the stories of the people behind open source.”
