My path to becoming a maintainer in the Backstage project wasn’t paved with years of prior open source experience. As a student interning at Red Hat, I started with a relatively fresh perspective. This is the story of that journey – how I navigated the complexities of Backstage, with the support of its community, allowing me to grow and learn, and how open source can empower anyone to do the same. Whether you’re new to open source or a seasoned developer, I believe you’ll find something valuable here. For those just starting out, I hope this inspires you to take that first step. And for experienced developers, I hope this offers a fresh perspective – a look at how a new contributor navigates a complex project, and perhaps, a reminder of our own beginnings.

Backstage

The author shares their journey from a novice contributor to a maintainer in the Backstage open source project. Starting as a student intern with minimal exposure to the tech stack, they gradually built their skills through hands-on experience and community engagement. They navigated challenges such as understanding Git and contributing meaningful features, eventually taking on more substantial roles and responsibilities within the community.

From Zero to Maintainer: My Open Source Journey with Backstage

Stage 3: Making substantial contributions ​

Stage 4: Becoming an active community member ​

What’s next: future steps as a maintainer ​

<p>Company i work for uses backstage. Upper management forced it down on every team and keep parroting to keep it updated. Literally no one in engineering uses it, non engineering are still going to wrong team for issues. Its a tech debt.</p>
