Mike Melanson

Explore our simple guide to finding projects, understanding guidelines, and making an impact. January 24, 2025 | Updated January 22, 2025 | 5 minutes Share: So, you’ve heard about open source. You know it’s a great way to learn new skills, build up your resume, and give back to the developer community—but maybe you’re not sure where to begin. Getting involved in open source can raise all sorts of questions: Are there specific contribution guidelines?

When I first sat down to write about this topic this week, my first instinct was for the entire intro to just say something along the lines of “Ugh, can we just NOT?” and then skip right into the weekly news summary. But then I heard the part about open sourcing Twitter, and my interest was piqued.

For the team behind Dagger, the “portable dev kit for CI/CD pipelines” that was launched into public beta last month, the open source startup is a bit of a second act. The trio of co-founders — Solomon Hykes, Andrea Luzzardi, and Samuel Alba — all spent nearly a decade working together at Docker, the company Hykes founded before leaving in 2018.