Why and How to Participate in Open-Source Projects in 2025

Are you a software developer looking to accelerate your career, enhance your skills, and expand your professional network? If so, contributing to an open-source project in 2025 might be your best decision. Open source is more than just a technical exercise; it’s a gateway to learning from industry experts, mastering new technologies, and creating a lasting impact on the developer community.

Over the years, one of the most common career-related questions I have encountered is: Why should I participate in an open-source project? With 2025 upon us, this question remains as relevant as ever. In this article, I will explore the reasons for engaging in open source, explain how to get started, and highlight some projects to consider contributing to this year.

Why Participate in an Open-Source Project?

Using Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle, let’s start with the fundamental question: Why?

Participating in an open-source project is one of the best ways to enhance both hard and soft skills as a software engineer. Here’s how:

Hard Skills

• Learn how to write better code by collaborating with some of the best developers in the industry.
• Gain experience with cutting-edge technologies, such as the latest Java versions, Hibernate best practices, and JVM internals.
• Expand your knowledge of software design patterns, architecture styles, and problem-solving approaches professionals use worldwide.

Soft Skills

• Improve your communication skills in written discussions (PR reviews, documentation) and real-time interactions. Additionally, enhance your verbal communication skills by participating in meetings, discussions, and presentations, which will help you become more confident in explaining technical concepts to a broader audience.
• Develop negotiation and persuasion skills when proposing changes or advocating for new features.
• Expand your professional network, allowing more people to recognize your contributions and capabilities.

When you contribute to open source, you distinguish yourself from the vast number of software engineers who use the software. Only a tiny percentage build and maintain these projects. A track record of contributions adds credibility to your resume and LinkedIn profile, making you stand out in the job market.

How to Get Started in Open Source

A common misconception is that contributing to open source is complicated or reserved for experts. This is not true. Anyone can start contributing by following a structured approach. Here are five steps to begin your open-source journey:

1. Choose a Project

Select a project that aligns with your interests or career goals. To become a database expert, contribute to an open-source database. If you want to improve your API development skills, work on frameworks related to API design.

Since open-source contributions often start as a hobby in your free time, ensure that the project provides valuable learning opportunities and supports your career aspirations.

2. Join the Team Communication Channels

Once you have selected a project, join the community. Open-source projects use various communication channels such as Slack, Discord, mailing lists, or forums. Introduce yourself and observe discussions, pull requests, and issue tracking to understand how the community operates.

3. Read the Documentation

Documentation is the bridge between you, as a contributor, and the project maintainers. Many developers rely on tutorials, blog posts, and YouTube videos, but reading the official documentation gives you a deeper understanding of how the project works. This also helps you identify documentation gaps that you can improve later.

4. Start with Tests, Documentation, and Refactoring

Before jumping into feature development, focus on tasks that are valuable but often overlooked, such as:

• Improving documentation clarity.
• Writing tests to increase code coverage.
• Refactoring legacy code to align with modern Java features (e.g., replacing Java 5 code with Java 17 constructs like Streams and Lambdas).

These contributions are always welcome, and since they are difficult to reject, they serve as a great entry point into any project.

5. Propose Enhancements and New Features

Once you have built credibility within the project by handling documentation, testing, and refactoring tasks, you can propose enhancements and new features. Many developers start by suggesting new features immediately, but without familiarity with the project's goals and context, such proposals may be disregarded.

Establishing yourself first as a reliable contributor makes it easier for your ideas to be accepted and integrated into the project.

Open-Source Projects to Contribute to in 2025

If you are looking for projects to contribute to this year, consider well-established ones under foundations like Eclipse and Apache, as well as other impactful open-source projects:

• Jakarta Data – for those interested in Java persistence and data access
• Jakarta NoSQL – ideal for developers exploring NoSQL databases with Jakarta EE
• Eclipse JNoSQL – a great entry point for those working with NoSQL in Java
• Weld – a core implementation of CDI (Contexts and Dependency Injection)
• Spring Framework – one of the most widely used frameworks in Java development
• Quarkus – a Kubernetes-native Java stack tailored for GraalVM and cloud-native applications
• Oracle NoSQL – a high-performance distributed NoSQL database for enterprise applications
• MongoDB – a widely-used NoSQL document database for modern applications

Conclusion

In this article, I explained why participating in open source is beneficial, how to start contributing, and which projects to consider in 2025. Contrary to popular belief, contributing is not difficult — it simply requires time, discipline, and consistency.

I have been contributing to open source for over a decade, and chances are, you are already using some of the projects I have worked on. I hope this guide helps you get started, and I look forward to seeing you on a mailing list or a pull request soon!

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