Contributing to open-source projects can be intimidating – and PostgreSQL is no exception. As a long-time PostgreSQL contributor, Aleks shares his h

How (and why) to become a PostgreSQL contributor

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2021-06-17 16:00:02

Contributing to open-source projects can be intimidating – and PostgreSQL is no exception. As a long-time PostgreSQL contributor, Aleks shares his hard-earned tips to help you make your first contribution, or start contributing more.

PostgreSQL is one of the most popular and loved databases in the world. It’s no secret that we are big fans of PostgreSQL at Timescale: We’ve built TimescaleDB on top of it, we employ open-source PostgreSQL contributors (like me!), and we’ve developed features to make using PostgreSQL better for time-series scenarios (like Skip Scan, which makes certain queries in PostgreSQL 8000x faster). But, in addition to helping improve the database itself, we’re committed to the success of the PostgreSQL community at large.

Open-source is not just my passion; it’s my career. I’ve been a PostgreSQL contributor since 2016, and recently joined Timescale as a full-time open-source PostgreSQL contributor. I’ve contributed not only to PostgreSQL but also to Insolar, Sigrok, and other open-source projects. I’m the author of pg_protobuf and ZSON extensions for PostgreSQL and several open-source libraries for STM32 microcontrollers.