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

Backstage celebrated its fifth anniversary in 2025 with major technical advancements. The platform now dominates the internal developer portal market with 89% market share. Key updates include the adoption-ready New Frontend System, deprecation of the old backend system, introduction of the Actions Registry with MCP server support for AI integration, and progress on Backstage UI design system. The community contributed over 7,700 commits to the main repo and 3,300 to community plugins, continuing to expand the ecosystem of adopters, contributors, and plugins.

Best of Backstage — 2025