Reinier Zwitserloot’s journey into the world of open source is a familiar one: he discovered a problem he thought he could fix, so he and his co-creator, Roel Spilker, decided to write a library to fix it.
Reinier and Roel maintain Project Lombok. Project Lombok is a Java library that automatically plugs into your editor and removes a lot of boilerplate from your code. They received a lot of good feedback for the project initially and have worked hard to keep it well maintained.
Finding time to work on projects is an issue many maintainers face. Both Reinier and Roel work full-time jobs in addition to maintaining Project Lombok. The solution for the duo has been to dedicate Monday evenings to Project Lombok.
The Monday night schedule has worked well, Reinier said, but if they don’t have time to fix all the bugs that evening, any remaining issues will have to wait till the next Monday.
We had the opportunity to speak with Reinier about his experience as an open source maintainer when he visited us a few months ago for our first ever Tidelift maintainer event. He shares more about his journey and why he thinks Tidelift can make open source work better—for everyone—in the video below.
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