In early 2022, I recorded my first podcast with Siwei, Ponyboy, and Rick. π I use DeepL translate Chinese contents and try to use Grammarly to make post clear and effective.
Siwei: Welcome to the new episode of Open Source Face to Face! I am Siwei Gu. Today, our hosts are Xiao Ma and Rick. Today’s main character is Zhiyuan Ju, a PMC member of the Apache APISIX project and a young “old” open-source player. Let’s ask Zhiyuan to introduce himself first.
Zhiyuan Ju: Hi everyone, I am Zhiyuan. I got involved in the Apache APISIX project after I graduated in 2019. Before that, I worked with Miya on freeCodeCamp, mainly for the domestic community; after graduation, I started to participate in Apache APISIX. I have a lot of stories, which I will share later.
Siwei: Let’s get to the point. If you often follow open-source circles or follow open source on Twitter, you should know ZhiYuan. Can you tell us a bit of how you came into contact with CS, programming, and open source?
Zhiyuan Ju: Well, I was born in 1997, and in 2003, my uncle put together a mainframe for me in Zhongguancun, Beijing. When I got home, I spent much time playing Flash games, and after playing for a long time, I thought I could make one myself because it was all SWF files, so I went to my mom and asked her if I could buy a Flash tutorial. This set of tutorials was quite expensive at that time (about 120 yuan), I grumbled around my mom for a long time, and finally, my mom bought me a tutorial book. Then I followed the tutorials while watching and doing, and after a long time, I found that it didn’t seem suitable for me, so I went on to play some other games, such as Run Kart. Then, in 2008, the summer of 2008, my Tencent QQ account was hacked. I tried how to get it back, the process of looking, found that there seems to be a word called Web security, a term called infiltration, and what Trojan horse, phishing, and then learned about some platform, like the Matrix, what is called? The hacker empire on this kind of platform, at that time there are a lot of such sites that teach hackers this kind of technology, and the sort of fee, I will download a variety of scripts on the Internet to execute, to infiltrate other people’s station or something. Then I found out that this is called script boy. I think it’s not cool enough, so I thought to learn something a little deeper and began to learn some programming language from scratch. At that time was still famous Delphi. Easy language, you can do a plain box, put it in the Internet cafe, the QQ point the EXE file to replace it, others fill in the account password, and send you an email. The first thing you need to do is send an email to your email address, do this kind of thing, and then later on. Yes, and then later to understand that there is a word called social worker, I think the social worker thing it is more dependent on your empathy, you are good at dealing with people, then pranked my tablemate. The game has been filled with a lot of money on my side to show off, but I did not play the game. I said you wait, and I will try to get you the account, I talked to him set up some information after. Its main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers. The fact is that the actual person has to be able to get a lot more than just a few of these. When I was in middle school, I saw the junior high school principal sorting out some information about the students. They were in dozens, maybe forty or fifty Excel sheets to search one by one, so I said I could give him a program to find it once he lost his name or a school number. I talked to him about this idea, and he was more supportive and gave me those examples of data, so I took them away. After I learned about the structure of the Excel table, I used an old database called what Microsoft Access is, called Access, which seems to be called Access.
Siwei: Microsoft Office Suite.
Zhiyuan Ju: Yes, then I looked for a door, and at that time, I thought Easy Language was not cool enough, so I used to learn Visual Basic, and through Toto Drag and Drop, I made a system out, a small system out. You can log in and register an account on it, and you can also search for school numbers, add some information about teachers and students, and make such a system and give it to the principal, but I’m not sure if he’s not using it. In high school, the school was more strict, so the time to contact the computer was much less. At that time, I could do something I liked in college, such as continuing to do things like Web penetration. When I went to college, I let my family buy me a MacBook after the entrance exam, and at that time, it was still a MacBook Pro. My first laptop was a Mac Book Pro, so I went online to find a lot of tutorials to learn, but when I knew, I found that if you want to do Web penetration, you have to understand the whole theoretical system of Web and how a Web service is built? How to build up? So I thought that if I wanted to be a student, I might as well go and learn the set of external R&D. I started from HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, knocking a little bit from 0, knocking a little bit. When I was in college, I was pretty lucky to receive some projects from the school in my first year, and this was also because some seniors in our department recommended the assignments to me. The University assigned some tasks to me. At that time, I did not even understand Web servers. I did not know how to build up, so I took the job down. After I got the job, I spent a long time looking up all kinds of information and reading it, and they would tell me why this domain name DNS is going on, how your web server is set up, and the difference between the Windows and Linux. In short, I did all kinds of projects in school to grind some of my Web development skills, and the result was that I honed for many years until I graduated from college in such a state. After college, I participated in the Apache APISIX community.
Siwei: You came into contact with computers very early, you were naturally very curious about those Flash games, you thought about how it existed, you came into contact with Flash development and read some books. Because when I was small, I also bought the book Flash when I was in middle school. I think that there are key points or something. The final result is to use it to make a personal website of mine, a gruesome kind, flash. So I know that thing is still an introduction. Hard, you want to program those parts. Still, you understand some concepts from that; after the reason for interest began to do the so-called script boy thing, not satisfied with the script boy, you began to use straightforward language, Delphi did some fashion things. Later, when you were in middle school, you also volunteered to help the principal do a system like VB’s Access, and for the first time, you did a production of a small application from 0 to 1. After going to university, this is a pretty cool mindset, and you put it into practice and insist on practicing it. I believe that what drives you may be a sense of accomplishment in your heart. And then in college, because you were exposed to those technology-related directly related to the Web, including you do penetration, so you want to know more underlying things. Before, when you said that some people introduced you to DNS, what Web server these things, you were in a club? Or did you have seniors or something like that?
Zhiyuan Ju: No, at that time, it was mainly the first guy I met in college. This buddy was also a technical bull. He did not do anything except front-end, other than engaging in, because his theory was better, he would engage in cryptography or some underlying things. So then the two of us worked together, the front-end for him is a high-level language, I do these more on the top, he did more on the bottom, we two do projects together.
Siwei: In fact, we know that now you are far from the state of self-learning back then. You also have a lot of meaningful and excellent output. How about, later on, step by step, because I know you met someone more powerful than your peers in college, it seems like you are more willing to be able to contact those compelling people, can you tell us how you go to grow these experiences?
Zhiyuan Ju: When I was a freshman, I learned about a project called freeCodeCamp by chance and met Mia through this project. In 2016, there was a Web Summit in Shanghai, and Mia was there, so I took a flight with another friend, and we went there to meet and chat and met with the organizers in Shanghai and other places afterward, the city organizer of freeCodeCamp. After I got back to school, I started talking with a small friend around me, what is freeCodeCamp, do you want to learn a web, this is very interesting, you will knock a little bit on it, this is the first. The second thing is that from the freeCodeCamp experience you can feel that you go to learn a thing, or you go to make friends, to meet some people who are more powerful than yourself, he does not have to be the kind of special cattle people, he only needs to be more powerful than you on the line, to talk to them, to do communication with them, they will be very happy to talk to you. The third thing is to say that at that time in doing a variety of outsourcing projects, in school because of a variety of outsourcing projects, there is pure front-end, there is also the kind of need for you to develop the whole site, at that time where contact with the server? I can only take (inaudible 00:11:40) to dislike, right? And take the kind of LeanCloud BaaS platform up to the interface will reduce your maintenance costs a lot. In the process of doing these things, I found a word is called architecture; after doing a few projects, I found a comment is an architecture, and learned about Xsummit, after learning that they want to go, but also suffer from saying that its price is too high, a ticket maybe four or five thousand dollars, I was thinking, I said what company will send people to this kind of activity, but I do not care, I think the price Very high, but I want to go again, I went to contact to this organizing committee, got Kevin, and sent him an email to see if it could be cheaper, and he gave me a bargain. He had the ticketing service contact me and asked me how much I could probably accept, and I looked at the ticket price of more than 4,000, and I said that would be 2,000 yuan.
Zhiyuan Ju: OK, then I took 2000 yuan to buy a ticket, and ran to the National Convention Center to go to that event, where I met Shi Jianqiang, Mr. Chi, and also met Dr. Wang Jian, at that time I thought the ticket was too late, the badge hung at that time, the name of our school was written on it. Still, I looked at all those people next to Huawei, Ali, what Ali middleware team, I said Anyway, I don’t know them, then talk to them. Then they are here to have what gains or do what things? Then they left some web, left a batch of the net. Later I found that, as if to participate in this kind of activities to know a lot of cattle, it feels like a flywheel will be addicted. Including later to participate in, maybe before this to participate in the Uyun Summit, this is in 2015 when a Uyun Summit and some other related activities are behind.
Zhiyuan Ju: All in all, I did not miss these activities, I will go to participate and then meet a variety of cattle, and they do an exchange. Of course, this will also be confirmed later, I say an example, in a group of Mr. Chi, he is a paid group, at the time of payment, he asked me, he said that for a student this price is too high, in fact, not much, like 1000 yuan, I did not even think, I joined in, after adding in. I just entered a WeChat group, but inside that group, they will regularly do sharing, I will take a look there are a lot of things I can not understand. Still, I put the people inside, WeChat added once, I think since they are willing to pay to add, that we may be able to talk to. Later, one of them contacted me and introduced me to some projects. The income earned a lot, and I think it’s worth it. After that, there are some similar channels, for example, like raw money, some people may not like it, but this channel I was added once, I am myself have earned back that ticket price, far back that ticket price. Yes, but, after graduation, may also be because of their things in gradually become more, I will feel about joining more information, I now have a little information saturation, so I will first reject this kind of thing, and then determine that I need these resources, regardless of how much it costs, I will go touch them on it.
Siwei: In fact, I listened to it, I have a lot of feelings, I feel that especially for many young people or people who want to change the track, you are in a Cold Start is a cold start state, your information is not enough, or you are highly damaging, asymmetric. The way to get information is to read or how. Knowing compelling people in that field is the same as reading an excellent book.
Zhiyuan Ju: That’s right.
Siwei: And to synchronize an interaction, to make a connection. So I think you could see very decisively that adding that kind of private domain is very valuable. It’s still a pretty cool thing, and it’s a very novel experience. Can you tell us again, because we as friends already know you through, that is, the top ten groups, already later with you a lot of follow-ups some of the experiences have a connection, you share with us again this part of the part?
Zhiyuan Ju: OK, in fact, I think the most impressive I have just mentioned, there is a minor partner introduced me to some outsourcing projects, I helped him to do, at that time maybe 1000 yuan to join in, but through the follow-up, the project to earn back may have tens of times. I also learned through this project because I was doing something I hadn’t done, so I got a high level of improvement in technology through this project, but it’s not convenient to talk about what specific project.
Siwei: We know you have been involved in some open source work later. You have a lot of remote work experience. Not only this one can give us a brief introduction to this experience.
Zhiyuan Ju: In fact, in the second year of college, at that time, I would think that I must be a freelancer when I graduate and do a freelancer, not a remote job, but at that time, I did not figure out the difference between the two. 2018 when I stayed in Frankfurt for half a year, European consumption will be very high. However, I brought some money from my family. The consumption is still relatively high. I think this opportunity to go was a remote work community called one morning and one night, but now I do not know if there is still, then it seems to become voltage, the founder of voltage should know this. I found a job on top of the community, part-time remote, the other party is in Canada, help them do it, you will be paid a sum of money every month, through this money I live very nourishing in Europe. When I returned to China in July, I went to interview Ali’s hippo department technology, the interview was passed, but by HR, because the HC problem, because the face of more than 40 days, HC to the end has not enough, so did not enter Ali. After I didn’t get into Ali, I stayed in NetEase for a while. I ran away from NetEase, I think I wouldn’t say I liked it too much, so I looked for a remote team in the U.S. called Team247. There are some influential engineers in the remote section, there will be a kind of remote awareness of these engineers also came from the big factories, so I learned a lot of things with them and contacted a lot of projects. For example, I helped Visa do a system for credit card issuance in the United States, which was contracted to the remote team.
Zhiyuan Ju: I think I was the one being led. Do this project to do remote work until May 2019, when it was to graduate, after graduation to a team in Shenzhen, and this team is in the Shenzhen side of the office, I will not talk about the specific. But because at the time of graduation, I also came into contact with the Apache APISIX project, which was purely open source at the time, I thought it was cool and a very new thing. It was a purely server-side application, and I thought it was unique. At that time, Wen Ming contacted me and said, “Can you do a Dashboard for him? By 2020, Wen Ming came to me and said, “Can we be a company? Couldn’t we do the future commercialization of these contents? At that time, I didn’t care too much about these things, I just watched that I could do open source projects full time, so I ran over. That was until I joined the company in 2020.
Rick: I have a question that I wanted to ask just now, and it’s very relevant to this topic. You started to take on some personal work. You know, a lot of people around me have done similar things, or at least thought about it, because people thought I could get some extra money, whether you could get this money, you could have a good time in Europe, or I could buy an iPhone or get something. Now we’re switching to open source, so if you look at it now, if you give So if you look at it now, if you give some advice or your opinion to some people in the student stage or have been working for a while, how do you think I spend my spare time I go to take a private outsourcing work, earn a few thousand or two thousand of such things, or that I go to participate in an open source community, Apache APISIX or Apache or Linux Foundation under the various open source projects How do you think about that? I can get a sum of money, and I seem to be working for free to help others to write some code. What do you think about this?
Zhiyuan Ju: OK, I think this is a good question. There is a way to find a job to support you to do remote, to do open source projects, this is a more ideal, better state, I would think that whether you take outsourcing, or you do open-source projects, take outsourcing you want to earn more money the problem is that you want to earn more money, let yourself live more comfortable, you can spend more. But from my personal experience in the past, I would suggest that if you are an engineer, to spend a period deeply involved in more well-known or more popular open-source projects, it is possible to get an excellent full-time open source project offer. The return will be far more stable than you take outsourcing, more that word called how to say? It is more compound interest. For example, my buddy, the same as me, graduated in 2019. His undergraduate degree is not in computer science. After graduation, he went to do some other unrelated work, he contacted me to see if he could, as if he thought I was doing quite interesting, he will often share some of my own stories in 2019, 2020, he saw that he probably had the idea, but did not have the courage to I said you should not think about it, you should come to Shenzhen, I will teach you Web technology because I will be more good at Web-related things. At that time, I maintained the Apache APISIX Dashboard project, which also needed new contributions, and our company was also in a climbing period and needed more people. I said I’d see if you could get deeply involved in the project and invite you into our company. From October 2020, he came to Shenzhen, and I taught him to write from the first line of code. Of course, I am not hand-holding. I will give him a series of tasks, is a little bit of the study, maybe a week, a month, at most to a month, and then I have not thought of myself. Let him learn those basic things after because I know new technology through real-world projects when learning external technology or other technology. For him, it just so happens that there are many things to do, so I will give you my things to do an excellent job because they are open source are open-source Dashboards to do some of the features. He went from a state where he could just write HTML and CSS beautifully, directly to say that you need to understand what engineering is, you need to understand the React set of things, you need to understand the Ant Design set of components is how to use, why it will do so, what it should use in the end what things. And the frameworks that Ant Design Pro is based on, how do they work? And what exactly is this task, and what kind of requirements does it fulfill? He stepped in many potholes, and I stepped in many potholes myself because this was the first person I led. After about three or four months, he takes the project to his experience to pile up a piece to find some work with him.
Zhiyuan Ju: The result is still relatively smooth. At once took four offers. Although it is not the kind of massive factory on this side of Shenzhen, local startups are still promising because I will help him pick. Finally, he went to a company and in that company to learn many things. Then later, I think this little brother is quite good, my side is also short of people, I will fish him over. He came in as an external engineer, but after he came in, he learned about Apache APISIX, a server-side software. He started to help Apache APISIX to do a lot of server-side stuff. I think his progress is speedy. If we put it in 2020, at that time, he just went to find some outsourcing part-time jobs or learned some HTML CSS to help others to do some pure static pages, although he can also earn money, maybe a good runner, a static page will be 1000 or 2000, to do such a single, but far from stable. And he joined a fast-growing startup team, and I think it is an infrequent experience for him. Overall, I would recommend joining an open-source project or one of the hotter open source projects.
Rick: You have just left the student period is not very long, so I’m also interested in the other one. Do you think if it’s for a student because you’ve gone through some outsourcing before to pick up some work, maybe you’ve bought a lot of electronics? And then you think back, if you were like now, open source is so popular, do you feel like a student to do some outsourcing work, buy yourself some cell phones, other SLR or electronic products good? Or that another to participate in open source projects? Can you help us analyze the pros and cons of this?
Zhiyuan Ju: OK, let’s put it this way, when I was in school, we had some outsourcing projects, I went to another friend of mine. I think it now is cheap you do a lot of things, you work day and night to help others do something, do things. Still, for students, it seems that a few thousand dollars can put you off, your time will become very cheap, this is for students, but us at that time But for us, including myself, I would feel as if it was cool, because what? Because at that time, we were still stuck in a premise of only 1000 yuan a month, you want to make friends, you want to socialize, you want to eat well, do not want to eat canteen, so many expenses from where to come, how to solve it? You look for parents, at least these people around me they are not this kind of people, will be more independent, they will choose to send some delivery or to do some tutoring, tutoring, some students he like these things, he does not consider other, do not consider those earnings. Still, most of the students, including myself, will go to calculate, as if it happens to choose the computer this road, as if to make money, come to money more The question that Rick asked just now. Just now, Rick asked the question if I am still a college student, now there is a sum of money to me, and let me go to do an open-source project, because my contact with open source projects earlier, I am 2012 on the beginning of the registration of my getup, 2012 registration getup, when it was junior high school, later more or less will come into contact with open source projects, will feel to make these things out for others to use, will be very cool. This is much stronger than the money that gives me the stimulus. If it were me, I would probably go for the latter. Still, after I took on the outsourcing project because sometimes a person took on two projects, the project is not to say a few thousand dollars, is probably already to 50,000 or 60,000 kind of level, 50,000 or 60,000 types of price, I need more human resources, this time I went to my friends around, let them do it, I will share it with them. They are thrilled doing it because why? The teacher taught they are some very basic, very weak, let you do a static page such content, this project is the Guangdong Province so and so Bureau to use, this system is to be related to what the country, we have a project to do the Guangdong Province timber transportation system, this system is the entire Guangdong Province will be used, just received by me, I got it after the distribution to the buddy, the buddy will be pleased because I do things people are using. Because I do things people are using, you give me 3000 yuan a month, OK, no problem, I will do, I will not I will learn, in the past, I also tried to make a lot of new friends, such as my roommate, I want to take them to learn a web, but at that time we will feel as if this thing after I graduate, anyway, I want to graduate school, I have the probability of graduate school should be no problem, why do I want to learn this Why should I know this? I am now short of money, can, I first go to find a temporary job, first do a do, if as a graduate, I would hope that we will consider the longer-term some. If you are doing computer, do the Internet, you can think at least participate in an open-source project inside, and now the domestic open-source culture will be better, as the Chinese Academy of Sciences Nanjing Institute, it will be held every year called what open-source summer activities, Shiwei should know, because we will participate in it every year, this activity it will encourage domestic college students to apply for registration, choose your favorite open source project, to find the project’s Main Project, see the project’s Maintain, as your mentor. From May to July or October, the project will be closed, and the student will be given a bonus, which will be divided according to the task’s high, medium, or low difficulty. Community of open source projects or some commercial companies behind the community. They all choose the students they attract to you from the Open Source Summer event to do internships.
Ponyboy: Let me listen. I’m curious. You were born in 1997, you started playing with computers in 2003, and then you did these projects for your teachers.
Zhiyuan Ju: I registered my GitHub in 2012, and at that time, I only knew about Open Source, but I didn’t know that it was a translation of open source. I learned about open source at the time, but what was open source? At that time, my understanding was that you could use what you wrote to make it public, and other people could use it.
PonyboyοΌ When did you really have a deeper understanding of open source? It’s not just Open Source, and it’s open-source. You know how it plays with this.
Zhiyuan Ju: OK, this should be after participating in freeCodeCamp, because in 2015 and 2016, Miya invited me to join Core Team as a Core Member, and I learned that you are not only working for freeCodeCamp in China, but you really want people to participate in the community. You really want people to participate in this community. When I had the concept of community, I realized that our freeCodeCamp project was an open-source project, and we invited others to participate in it, hoping to encourage others to become better by participating in these projects. I later had the feeling that this seemed to be an interpretation of the open-source spirit. Including in college, in the dormitory, in their own side of friends, will be in school to run some computer-related, mainly Web, Web-related teaching others how to learn Web because at that time we have a computer room, the computer room just let me manage, I will fish a group of students every day at noon to come over to them to speak, just in the computer room inside you can practice a practice.
Ponyboy: I think there is a line from you is very clear, for example, you may be 2003, for example, at that time you may be six years old, six years old when you play with the computer, to later you asked your mother to buy you Flash book, this is also the first point you take the initiative, you take the initiative to ask your mother to buy you books, to the back of the school, you take the initiative to go to the teacher to say I write a program for you, to the back you take the initiative to You took the initiative to participate in Dr. Wang Jian’s activities, and finally you took the initiative to find Miya, you put you a whole line, from your participation in the open-source journey, of course, you may be the beginning of your curiosity, I see how to play, from your curiosity to recognize the word open source, to later you have a deeper understanding of it. For example, join FCC to now a full-time, there is a whole set of keywords, active. In fact, we do open source, and we do out of many people, is what you have to go to the initiative, no wait. For example, if you think that if you did not take the initiative to ask your mother to buy you books, you would not go backward, if you did not ask the teacher to give you that data, you go to do a VB program, you may not go to learn something, right? The whole process has an initiative, which is a very good point. To do open source, we must be the initiative. Now many people may be used to it because we are used to passive, the top to me to assign tasks I can complete, I finished very well, will be completed very beautiful, you give me 100 points, I can make 120 points effect. But you let me take the initiative to do this very little. I see this from you, active, especially good.
Rick: I want to add a little background to our show today. In fact, Zhiyuan may have seen our open-source face-to-face show on Twitter or in his circle of friends, so he helped us directly. The show. So I think it’s really great that Brother Ponyboy is taking the initiative. You can bring a lot of things to the table, especially in the field of open source, and it’s especially important for people to take the initiative to do something. So now it may be, many companies in the JD will say, you love open source or what, I think one of the traits or characteristics, in fact, we see in some of the units employing people, do open source people usually will be more active.
Si for: my feelings, including the pony also summed up, is that you take the initiative of that energy, including you grew up very much like to go, curiosity drives you to understand these things, on the acquaintance of some people, to do something out. I think you are a very good mind, so that you go to be able to mobilize the right resources, including perhaps when you are in school you will choose to create something again, and earn off a little money. Later I also learned that, for example, when you are in school, you have been able to benefit other students through your own resources, and in the case of Aliyun OSS put, you have two months of living expenses are deducted, you can still hold yourself. Including later you have the financial ability, independent case, you are very enthusiastic about going, you very like to do a lot of open source contributors to some donations. I saw that you even donated an M1 Macbook Pro to a contributor from another country because he didn’t have a good computer, right? I’m not sure, but I think it’s pretty cool that you’re able to realize how to leverage resources and do cool things, and you like to give, which I think is very valuable. And I especially agree that you have a sentence that exposes your Motivation. To be able to do open source full-time, you think this thing is self-explanatory, the first priority. In fact, I believe that several of us here, including our listeners, may also think so, but I also want to know how you build up this set of taken for granted. If you can be paid full-time to do open source, this thing is the first priority. How do you make such a decision, on the experience of what things?
Zhiyuan Ju: the most important thing to do open source full-time or to do open source, because I think doing open source this thing will be very cool, and it is actually gainful, people will think why should I give what I do for free to others to use, why do you want to open the code out? And in addition to the code, when we watch Netflix, YouTube, or the domestic Akiyon platform, we will look for some third-party, not official resources, maybe pirated resources, we will think I can obviously rely on the strength to find, why do I have to pay him? Have you ever thought about what these creators will do if I don’t pay? At this time, it just occurred to me that when I was very young, when I was in my early years, we would install Kingsoft Doppler on our computers, and at that time, it was 10 yuan a month. From the day it began to charge, I took my father’s cell phone to send 10 yuan a month SMS fee, to it to use the genuine, I would like to enjoy this feeling. Including those operating systems, although I later learned that the Windows I bought was also fake and very cheap, it should be very expensive for the genuine version. But at that time, I think that kind of awareness should be better, to support the genuine, and then back to the code above, open-source this piece, this is self-explanatory, I do things I hope it is used by more people, hope that more people because of these projects and benefit. For example, some people often ask me, “If you do open-source projects, how do you support yourself, and how do you make money? For example, if you use Vue.js, how much sponsorship money does it receive every month to support Yuxi and his team, or if you use the tools you use, or if you use their projects, they help you solve a lot of problems. I think Sponsor is a very direct way to express my gratitude for helping you solve a lot of problems. I also hope that I really have some cool open source projects in the future that people will like, and people will feel like giving you a reward for liking you.
Rick: I would like to ask a question. I believe that many technical posts, significantly R&D posts, have more or less an impulse to say that I want to participate in open research because we do technology and want to do incredible things. For example, I did Java before writing for many years, and everyone uses it. I think it is almost Apache, even more than Oracle’s contribution. So if I can participate in a lot of Apache some Java open source projects, this is very, very cool, but we feel as if my ability does not seem to that level. In addition, to say I work a lot of overtime, there are some excellent companies 996, what 007 no time, I have absolutely no time to participate in open source, I also want to participate in open source, and even I wish to participate in open source full-time. Still, we feel He is now a state to his desired state between the gulf is particularly deep, particularly large, which I do not know whether you have a deep sense of this one or experienced. Still, you can not form your own experience to elaborate or express a point of view.
Zhiyuan Ju: Rick just mentioned this example: I am swamped every day. I do not have time to do a seemingly unprofitable thing. This is like saying that my previous buddy, who is not computer-related, that buddy is called Guo Qi, even if the name is Guo Qi, there are many such similar friends, he will think I want to go to graduate school, I want to enter the way to graduate school, maybe easier to find a job in the future. Or now I think I have more important things. Although I want to make money, I want to have more income, but I have more items and will always find various reasons to refuse. I think it’s recommended to get out of this step. Break the circle. Because you don’t break the process, you don’t start the first step you will never begin. Back to my a very specific example above, because after 2019, I am mainly active in the Apache APISIX project, in this project will indeed meet many domestic developers, they may be the first is the age, I am 1997 relative to I will be much older, plus the last two years in the domestic open source suddenly popular, for them is a very new thing, they use the open source in the country. A unique something, they use your project, they want to contribute to you, they see your code, they use your code, they can download your code through a faster way. Still, they encounter problems when they want to give you feedback or I can not change this thing to contribute to the community, and he does not know how to do it.
Zhiyuan Ju: What should we do for these users? We have some communication channels, like GitHub, and of course, we recommend that you use English to communicate on GitHub. Still, according to the situation of developers in China now, you can’t ask for 100% of them. If you talk to them a few times on GitHub and find that you’ve written something, they come back with a simple If you find that you’ve written something on GitHub. They come back with a few sentences or reply to you in Chinese, and you can feel the impatience of the other side. Still, the other side will feel that this kind of asynchronous communication is challenging, and they can’t understand it. Still, they want to help you change this problem and want to advance your community. I will take the initiative to touch them, that is, to go through their getup mailbox, and if they don’t have a mailbox, they will look for other ways. The social worker will come out with some of their We can’t have a Tencent meeting, 15 minutes on the line, to talk about it. This is the first, GitHub is just a channel, similar to the mailing list, WeChat group, QQ group, because we will continue to watch the project it various channels of user feedback, when I see that you are active, you want to solve the problem, you are thinking about the community, rather than saying that I am here to enjoy to whoring you, he really wants to help you do something, but do not know how to When you take the first step, I think as some maintainers of the community, or more active can take the initiative to contact them, to establish this connection, because you do community you are to develop a variety of links, between your community members and members of the relationship, members and the connection of the project. These are to do your community with other projects and other community connections. For Rick just mentioned this kind of problem, if I words I will take the initiative to contact them, really will be about a lot of meetings, do not tire of talking with them, of course, we will also be in the document above to write, you find a problem, the document type of problem, you step how to do, two steps how to do, one, two, three follow, if it is a code problem, if I do not understand, I will help them build a bridge because I I know who understands the community, I will help this user and know this person to establish a connection, build a meeting, we solve the problem. This way, the newcomer knows how the community process is, knows that someone is caring for him, and for this project, this project is more perfect. It is mutually beneficial.
Rick: I slightly summarize the second half of the words, Zhiyuan may speak more from the perspective of, of course, I started with a question to help some people who want to participate in open source to raise a question. On the contrary, the more healthy and active open source projects or open source communities are being concerned about, are monitoring, monitoring this word is not very good, is trying to focus on a state of everyone. If you show such positive comments, everyone will be happy to help you to participate in the open-source community. So, combined with the first part of Zhiyuan’s talk, you have to take the first step to break the circle. You don’t have to write code. Show your enthusiasm your positive attitude, and people will come to you.
Zhiyuan Ju: Yes, and I was at the end of 2019 when the Apache APISIX project was donated to the Apache Software Foundation, because when you contribute to the foundation, it will allow you to choose a group of the earliest of these, called the initial committer, the earliest group of committers, and I got an email saying, do you want to join I was so happy about that, and I was so proud to sign my name on, take a picture of it, and pass it on to them, and have my Apache ID, and I thought that was a cool thing.
Rick: It was excellent.
Zhiyuan Ju: Only later did I know what, only later did I know that like a lot of open-source software, and not open source software, many companies are supporting open source projects, like, they have Apache mailboxes for you, for these more famous projects, you are his member of the words, he will give you a lot of benefits, this is what I later learned.
Rick: I just found out today, and I’m even more envious of it because although the feather is light, its meaning is still weighty.
Zhiyuan Ju: And when you go to talk to foreign contributors or foreign users, those Twitter users you follow, when you speak to them, you say I’m an Apache Member because Committer and PMC are both Members, are members of Apache, when you talk to them, they will say they feel amazed, they will think you are very They are more willing to talk to you. This is invisible. You do not have a straightforward monetary return because I think when you do, things do not have to be to figure this kind of money above the rescue. You focus on doing what you want to do. Wealth or something is some of the complementary products.
Ponyboy: I also have a point, and you mentioned earlier to participate in open source, now there are also some problems, many people want to participate in open source, there is also a card, everyone will be on, I must contribute code only. Still, you also mentioned earlier not necessarily writing code to participate in the membership. From your personal point of view or your side of some stories, there is no advice to everyone?
Zhiyuan Ju: Yes.
Ponyboy: I can participate in membership without writing code.
Zhiyuan Ju: First of all, Apache has a website called community.apache.org, which has various rules for the Apache community, and it mentions that you don’t have to contribute code to become a Committer or PMC. This is a very common, very broad phrase. That is, you help the project to develop and grow, which are considered contributions. The specific point, for developers, the most direct is the code, for non-computer-related practitioners, for example, I like to read, I read a lot of books, I see your project’s documentation, although I do not understand what you said in the end, I can see that some projects its documentation is a direct machine translation, I can not go to help? If your English is good, can you help him do some more authentic translation, which is a kind of non-code contribution to the documentation? There is a third kind of evangelist. OK, I understand what you are doing in this project. I do not need to care about what details are implemented in the end. I just need to know what features you have. I’m going to talk to Rick, and I’m going to talk to Wanda. What does Apache APISIX do? What problems can it solve? Who are its users? What problems does this project help them solve? You don’t need to write a line of code, and you just need to understand it like a new APP and then go to the public to speak about it. And for the Apache Foundation, you help the foundation do evangelism, talk about the Apache Way, talk about the Apache Way, tell some of its stories, and share them with the public, which is also a kind of contribution. People like to listen to stories. You are sharing open-source stories and then more and more stories. This is also considered a contribution. For example, Apache APISIX has encountered many developers who will say that your project is not doing well, and he will really write that your project is not doing well. Still, he will not tell you that the project is not doing well when you are using what things, when you are using what features, because we may be more familiar with Apache APISIX, so we can’t get to your point. Still, If you can describe it more clearly, someone from the community will help you explain this stuff to you clearly, and then see whether the documentation is miswritten or the code is miswritten. Then we can backfill the project inside. This way, the people behind them may not encounter this kind of problem, which is a contribution.
Siwei: For example, you will see some people in the community want to contribute, but he does not seem to have time or does not know how to go Flow. You will human his mail find that person to establish a synchronized 15-minute Meeting with him. I think I understand that this is typical. You, as Community Manager and community manager such a top hat work Can you tell us what your Daily Work-Life is like in such a role? And what made you think about switching to such a role? Do you worry about getting away from technology? How about keeping you on Coding to continue refining or making progress like this?
Zhiyuan Ju: OK, first of all, I’m not the Community Manager of the Apache APISIX community, it’s a foundation project inside the Apache APISIX community, it doesn’t belong to any company, so I just have a good feeling about this project, and I’m involved in it earlier, so I’m willing to help to do some maintenance things. Anyone can do it. As for Work-Life, sometimes it can take all night or all day. After all, the initial author of the project is Chinese. There are a lot of Chinese users on this project, and I’ll give you an example of some of them, some of them we want to write in English for GitHub, and we want them to write in detail, but most of them can’t. I understand that, and I’ve even thought about helping them make bots that write in Chinese and translate into English. But for the long-term development of the community, we don’t want to have too much non-English on it because we want to make it a global project. But it’s also very surprising that some users really write in great detail, and they may encounter problems afterward, and they can really give you the context of which version and how it operates, step by step. For this kind of user, this kind of treasure user in my heart, then definitely want to Connect with him, so I will take the initiative to find him. In fact, when looking for will also spend more energy. The next thing, I will go through the feedback of each group or each channel every day to see what feedback, but how to say, in fact, there will be a lot of feedback, I do not have the energy to really give it a record down, so still in the direction of guiding them to the above message to go. What I’m doing now is to guide them to continue to leave comments so that I don’t need to go to the WeChat group QQ group inside to collect fragmented feedback. Another thing, because as an open-source project, we definitely want it to be widely used, and I want to find out which users are using it, I will go to or Google the keyword Apache APISIX to see who has mentioned this word, and I can find a lot of real treasures. Some people write a lot of articles after using Apache APISIX, but they don’t talk about it because there is no strong official awareness to guide them to contribute to the official article, but they write blogs about these Best Practices, and I will contact these authors to find ways to get them to contribute it to the community. For these authors, it is also an incentive for them. The second thing is to find new companies that are using it, but they’re not contributing to Apache APISIX or leaving comments. They’re just using it themselves. I was looking through it last Sunday night, and suddenly I found a company called Swisscom, which is using Apache APISIX and an advanced feature, and I contacted its Maintainer, who said he didn’t expect that someone would leave an issue in their repository to say hello. Like these users, I will also connect with them continuously. In fact, every day, to do these things in a word is to listen.
Ponyboy: I particularly agree with one point you just said. In fact, you mentioned that Apache APISIX does not particularly want to have too much Chinese content. In fact, do not misunderstand that we do not support people to write Chinese. The first one is that open source is a great opportunity for China and the world to synchronize because the charm of open source is that people around the world, using all corners, can collaborate in a way, collaboration means that we should know each other; second, in July this year, the GOTC conference, that is, the Global Technology Summit, at that time invited Linus God to do The last question asked him: how can Chinese open-source developers better participate in open source, and he mentioned two points: the first point is culture, we will not mention it; the second he mentioned the language, which he said is also a barrier. He also said, I want to say this thing, at that time because the other side could not hear clearly, can not understand, so he also suggested that we put the language piece we are not saying that Chinese is not important, in the open-source piece, if you try to go to the English practice because you can express your meaning clearly, you go out to share or write something or, this is a good opportunity to synchronize. Now it also helps a lot of our domestic open source projects to go global, such as radio and television. This does not mean disdain for the Chinese. It is indeed in the open-source piece if the English language is good for our whole open-source to promote the development of great help.
Zhiyuan Ju: OK, in fact, in the Apache APISIX community, we all know that it has a lot of Chinese users. For Chinese users, the reason why TAs are really reluctant to go to GitHub and raise issues is that after they submit in Chinese, the community will ask the TA to write in English. The first thing we did was to help the TA translate English after he submitted it in Chinese, but we didn’t translate the whole body, we translated the title into a more semantic one because we really had limited energy and couldn’t help translate every single one of them, but I could help the TA semanticize the title. Your content is written well, plus go. This way, recently, the community above the mention of English those users a lot more.
Siwei: Just now, you have actually mentioned the summer of open source. I remember you have done a sharing of the charm of open source to our team before, and then you seemed to have spoken similarly at the Apache Conference. One is that I have the impression that you have shared with me a phenomenon that you have observed by participating in a Google Summer that Codel, I do not know if you are willing to share again, and you can give us a brief description of your understanding of the charm of open source, such Topic?
Zhiyuan Ju: OK, because that sharing should be at the beginning of last year, it’s quite early. At that time, my partner from Matrix Partners China introduced me to the partners here, and we had a chat. At that stage, for me, the most direct thing is. First, you join a great foundation, an open-source organization, and you feel proud to join Apache, which is intrinsic. Second, the project you made is really being used by many users. Like Weibo, WPS, these users, and Aiki, when you use WPS, your information will go through the processing, you brush the microblogging or watch Aiki time will be proxy off. What you do is not so far from you. You are the user of your product. This is also an intrinsic incentive but also a universal benefit because, with your project, these companies can use it very securely. It does not need to have too much concern in the traffic above, too much worry. The third point is that through open source projects, I have met many friends, many of whom are like-minded partners, like the ones here, and the ones who follow on GitHub and Twitter, who have touched and talked with them. The fourth point is that you can guide your friends through open source projects, and they can also benefit from open source, which you will feel very good about. There is a saying that when you make money you have to let your classmates and friends around you follow, otherwise you will not go far. Let them learn technology through open-source projects, or to increase their influence, for them, their vision, their eyes, their ability or their most direct salary increased, for themselves, the relationship between the two people is also better, right? The last point is very direct for me, that is, there is some capital to support you to do such a thing. In fact, even if I am not in this company, I will continue to go to the past. Whether it is Apache APISIX or some new projects in the future, I will go to continue to watch them. Doing open source projects, this open-source spirit will not be because you do not have the capital to support you, you do, but a very spontaneous, you will feel very cool, your friends will feel very cool, your whole side is happy, quite happy, I would think that this state will be very good.
Siwei: And you are complete. I can put it inside. Everyone interested can go to see it. Because I actually wanted to ask before, you mentioned here again that your friend could benefit, I’m really curious, we have very limited time, I’m curious, can you briefly introduce to everyone, you gave you that one friend, because I understand that you put your that Guo students, you seem to be a little child born from a muggle family with magical talent, personally turned him into a magician. I especially want to know some details, such as what kind of frequency you two are in contact with, you keep all the Tasks in your community head some? Or is it something you’ve done before? What’s it like? Can you give us a brief introduction?
Zhiyuan Ju: OK, the first point is that I agree with myself that I can improve my skills through real-world projects. OK, the specific project, after he learned, I contacted Zhu Feng, Jinjin podcast anchor, he happens to have a project is related, that is purely volunteer behavior, there is no interest, yes. The project was originally asked me to do, then just Guo Qi came, his skills can also learn, I think it should be on a stage, and also not in a hurry, let him use to practice, I came to do to help him do Review. Then that project finished, followed by some open-source projects of Apache APISIX because at that time it was a server-side project, its sub-projects which have a Project contributor are actually not many, just pull over-familiar with the project to do a task. If you want to talk about frequency, actually, I think it has something to do with the initiative. He is more hardworking himself. There is another example, and it was in Summer 2020, Summer 2020, there is a little brother in Tianjin, Tianjin, he is still in school, junior, he was enrolled in one of my projects, the front-end is doing particularly well, the result is that after the event, found that Golang writes particularly well, on the server-side write particularly well, the result is now Apache APISIX Nginx Lua are now engaged. I voted for him some time ago, and he was chosen as our youngest PMC member.
Rick: That’s a really cool one too!
Zhiyuan Ju: Yeah.
Rick: It’s really cool because it proves that you don’t have to say that you have to go all the way to black, that I have to provide a very powerful and awesome code to become a PMC or a Committer, and this story is really good.
Zhiyuan Ju: And little brother, he was in business school.
Siwei: What kind of person do you want to be?
Zhiyuan Ju: OK, my answer to this question is still very firm: from a very young age, I read a book called “Be the best you can be,” written by Dr. Kai-Fu Lee. Speaking of Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, now I am separated from him by a person, which I think is still cool, to be so close to the person I grew up admiring! Going back to the question I asked earlier, I think it’s important to keep going to insist on being an empathetic person.
Ponyboy: Cool.
Rick: Cool.
Ponyboy: Kudos.
Rick: Please ask a question for our next guest, we’re kind of like unpacking a blind box here, and we don’t know who the next guest is.
Zhiyuan Ju: OK, because I like to listen to stories myself, so let’s talk about the stories he finds impressive.
(End)
