How we're giving back to open-source projects

Doing what we can, in the way that we can.

We try to never lose sight of the fact that first and foremost we’re part of a community. This is not something we say simply to pay lip service, but rather something that we think about often in terms of our real connection, and more recently, our contribution. Over the years, we’ve expressed our appreciation through real-life participation in the form of talks and creating helpful content to serve the broader open-source community.

Our foundation as a company is firmly rooted in open-source projects, and as a result, so is our success. The altruism and collective effort that powers the open-source community reflects our core values. With this in mind, we’ve recently launched an initiative to give back to the open-source projects that we're passionate about.

“Every good gesture doesn’t have to be grandiose but it’s about the conscientious decision we took to contribute. Everyone requires this software to exist for our industry to be healthy. From that perspective, we have to do something and get the conversation going.” — Yasser Saleemi, Giant Swarm Solution Engineer

With the hope of fairly and sustainably supporting open-source projects, we’ve started a simple process whereby every quarter, team members can nominate and vote for projects to determine who we’ll contribute to over the next three months. Each project that’s chosen will receive €2 000. To nominate a project, a one-line explanation of why this project is important must be submitted, and then voting happens with a simple 👍 emoji.

As Yasser explains; “We wanted this to be an easy and simple process that avoided bureaucratic red tape. We decided that this straightforward voting system was the best way to go. You’re trying to do something good, you’re not trying to demotivate people. Having everyone pitch in takes the burden off individuals to do it. Everyone is sharing the responsibility to contribute.”

Our ultimate goal is to give back and show our gratitude to the community that we’re both part of, and beneficiaries of, and do so in a tangible and consistent way.

👋 Do you have an open-source project that you think we should support? Let us know! We’d really love to hear from you.