Patrick Stephens, a maintainer of Fluent Bit, discusses encouraging open-source software (OSS) contributions at the Open Source Monitoring Conference 2024. He highlights the benefits of contributing to OSS for both individuals and companies, emphasizing community engagement, technical development, and support for projects. Suggested contributions include documentation, issue reproduction, testing, and feature implementation.

1. Encouraging OSS
contribution
Patrick Stephens
Fluent Bit maintainer
November 2024
Open Source Monitoring
Conference 2024

2. THANKS FOR OSS

3. chronosphere.io
Goals
Encourage contribution
● More people and companies to contribute to OSS
● Issues, PRs, docs, tests, resources or otherwise
● Answering questions, community engagement, blogs, spreading the love!
● Benefits for individuals and enterprises

4. chronosphere.io
More goals
Talk about myself (and Fluent Bit)!
● Not the typical OSS developer so encourage others
● I am terrified of approaching people so come chat please

5. chronosphere.io
What is Fluent Bit
High Performance & Low Resource Usage
- Optimized for speed and efficiency
- Minimizes CPU and memory footprint, reducing energy consumption
Vendor Neutral & Flexible Integration
- Open source and vendor-agnostic
- Supports seamless integration with popular ecosystems like
Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, and more.
Broad Ecosystem Support
- Extensive plugin ecosystem for easy data routing and processing
- Suitable for cloud, on-premise, and edge deployments

6. chronosphere.io
$ whoami
Patrick Stephens
● 22+ years experience software engineering
● Primarily in defence doing C++ & Java as an
infra/platform engineer & architect
● More recently containers, K8S and Golang
pat@chronosphere.io
https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickjkstephens/
https://github.com/patrick-stephens

7. chronosphere.io
A typical “day”
1. Start with Slack
2. Check issues/discussions - “try with latest” or “request for more info”
3. PR contributions or review
4. Write blog post/training webinar/conference presentation
5. Book reviews - not that typical!
6. Community meetings

8. chronosphere.io
Slack/community interaction
Some users cannot contribute directly
but can answer questions
Generally common themes so easy to
answer or ask for info
Typically see the first visibility of
problems as well as common use cases
Lots of engagement
https://launchpass.com/fluent-all

9. chronosphere.io
Documentation and use cases
Knocked up more detailed answers in blog posts as well.
● Repost links to answer questions easily
Easiest way to contribute:
● Correct/add something
● Example of your usage - docs and/or test cases
● Language reviews
A lot of questions around the same themes in Slack.
“The docs don’t say this”, well let’s add it then.

10. chronosphere.io
Advice and suggestions
A priority-queue of suggestions for contribution
● Engage - join in with community events & channels
● Sponsor - compute or other resources
Direct/Technical help
● Simplify - reproduce issues to help users & maintainers
● Document - add missing or update incorrect information
● Test - add unit or integration tests for your use cases
● Triage - first line of response
● Implement - provide features or functionality
Follow issue/PR templates and contribution guides.

11. chronosphere.io
Advice and suggestions
A priority-queue of suggestions for contribution
● Engage - join in with community events & channels
● Sponsor - compute or other resources
Direct/Technical help
● Simplify - reproduce issues to help users & maintainers
● Document - add missing or update incorrect information
● Test - add unit or integration tests for your use cases
● Triage - first line of response
● Implement - provide features or functionality
Follow issue/PR templates and contribution guides.

12. chronosphere.io
Advice and suggestions
A priority-queue of suggestions for contribution
● Engage - join in with community events & channels
● Sponsor - compute or other resources
Direct/Technical help
● Simplify - reproduce issues to help users & maintainers
● Document - add missing or update incorrect information
● Test - add unit or integration tests for your use cases
● Triage - first line of response
● Implement - provide features or functionality
Follow issue/PR templates and contribution guides.

13. chronosphere.io
Advice and suggestions
A priority-queue of suggestions for contribution
● Engage - join in with community events & channels
● Sponsor - compute or other resources
Direct/Technical help
● Simplify - reproduce issues to help users & maintainers
● Document - add missing or update incorrect information
● Test - add unit or integration tests for your use cases
● Triage - first line of response
● Implement - provide features or functionality
Follow issue/PR templates and contribution guides.

14. chronosphere.io
Advice and suggestions
A priority-queue of suggestions for contribution
● Engage - join in with community events & channels
● Sponsor - compute or other resources
Direct/Technical help
● Simplify - reproduce issues to help users & maintainers
● Document - add missing or update incorrect information
● Test - add unit or integration tests for your use cases
● Triage - first line of response
● Implement - provide features or functionality
Follow issue/PR templates and contribution guides.

15. chronosphere.io
Advice and suggestions
A priority-queue of suggestions for contribution
● Engage - join in with community events & channels
● Sponsor - compute or other resources
Direct/Technical help
● Simplify - reproduce issues to help users & maintainers
● Document - add missing or update incorrect information
● Test - add unit or integration tests for your use cases
● Triage - first line of response
● Implement - provide features or functionality
Follow issue/PR templates and contribution guides.

16. chronosphere.io
Advice and suggestions
A priority-queue of suggestions for contribution
● Engage - join in with community events & channels
● Sponsor - compute or other resources
Direct/Technical help
● Simplify - reproduce issues to help users & maintainers
● Document - add missing or update incorrect information
● Test - add unit or integration tests for your use cases
● Triage - first line of response
● Implement - provide features or functionality
Follow issue/PR templates and contribution guides.

17. chronosphere.io
Why contribute as an individual?
Personal and technical development
● Technical skills specific to that project
● More general communication skills and working with others
● Networking and job offers

18. chronosphere.io
Why contribute as a company?
Company benefits
● Direct testing of how it is used
● Reduce costs of patches/updates on top
● Speed of fixes and go to market

19. chronosphere.io
Wrap-up
You can contribute in various ways:
● Documentation, answering questions, blog posts, training.
● Reproducing issues with simple tests
● Adding tests or CICD
● Implementing fixes and features
● Supporting via resource or infrastructure usage
Using OSS and contributing to it can benefit you commercially too.
● Features you need added, scenarios you use tested, etc.

20. chronosphere.io
Questions?
Patrick Stephens
pat@chronosphere.io
http://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickjkstephens/
Fluent Bit
Slack
5 free copies for questions!
45% off all Manning products until December 4:
oscm45
https://bit.ly/fluentbit-workshop