Explore resources

Neha Burnwal’s career in open source with Eclipse PDE

Portrait of a smiling woman with long dark hair against a dark blue background featuring flowing purple lines.

From user to committer By Eclipse Foundation staff In the Eclipse Foundation July Community Newsletter, we featured Neha, Software Engineer at IBM and Eclipse Foundation committer for Eclipse PDE. In the interview, she shares how she progressed from using Eclipse Foundation projects to contributing to them, what she has learned from the community, and how […]

Passion and commitment: Theresa Seyram Agbenyegah’s open source journey

Theresa Seyram Agbenyegah smiling against a blue background with abstract wave patterns.

by Eclipse Foundation Staff “I see open source as a career” For the past seven years, Theresa Seyram Agbenyegah has been growing alongside Ghana’s open source community as a developer, organiser, volunteer, mentor, and advocate. What began in 2018 with a simple invitation to a Django Girls coding workshop has grown into both a passion […]

Joyce Dzifa Lokko: Creating opportunities in Ghana’s growing tech ecosystem

Portrait of a person wearing a black long-sleeved top, standing with folded arms and looking at the camera with a slight smile. The background is a dark blue graphic with curved, light-blue line patterns in the top left and bottom right corners, leaving ample negative space on the left for text.

by Eclipse Foundation Staff “We’re not just developers. We’re 360-degree engineers.” For more than a decade, Joyce Dzifa Lokko has been navigating Ghana’s evolving technology landscape as an engineer, community leader, mentor, and advocate for greater representation in technology. Her beginnings in technology were anything but easy. From struggling to understand her first programming lessons […]

How Sayantika turned wanderlust into open source innovation

Portrait of a smiling person wearing a dark jacket, sunglasses, wireless earbuds, and a gray baseball cap against a blue abstract background with flowing line patterns.

By Eclipse Foundation Team Software development without borders On some days, Sayantika Banik is reviewing pull requests and designing AI-powered data systems. On others, she is diving beneath the ocean surface somewhere off a remote island, disconnected from the internet entirely. Her company meetings happen across continents. Her collaborators are scattered across time zones. And […]

What open source has taught me about community, resilience, and purpose

Ruth Ikegah’s story In this guest post, Ruth Ikegah, open source pioneer and community builder in Africa, shares her journey – from her upbringing in a rural Nigerian household to global tech conference stages. Drawing on her experience building sustainable open source communities, she shares key lessons on leveraging open source as a career launchpad, […]

From classrooms in China to code in Ottawa

Portrait of a woman with shoulder-length dark hair and glasses, wearing a black cardigan over a white striped shirt, set against a blue gradient background with abstract wave lines.

Sophia Guo’s path across continents Sophia has contributed to open source since 2018. She currently works for IBM and is involved in Eclipse AQAvit™, where she serves as project lead. From teaching software-related subjects at a university in China to building Java technologies in Ottawa, she has steadily grown into a key contributor in the […]

From Karachi to Düsseldorf: How open source shaped Saad Bin Rafiq’s journey

Saad Bin Rafiq

By Eclipse Foundation Team “If you want people who go the extra mile, you will find them in Pakistan” When Saad Bin Rafiq first encountered JavaScript in 2008, he didn’t yet know the word open source. What he did know was curiosity, and the feeling that a few lines of code could change everything. Growing […]

Caribbean contributors: Brayan Muñoz, Java professional and young professor

Smiling man wearing a black quarter-zip athletic top with a white collar and a red bird logo on the chest, standing against a blue abstract background with flowing wave lines.

By Eclipse Foundation Team  How a Gen Z developer is shaping the Dominican Republic’s open source community From zero experience to global impact: Some developers grow up tinkering with computers. Others write their first line of code before they even know what a compiler is. But for Brayan Muñoz, the journey began in a completely […]

Caribbean contributors: Eudris Cabrera, networker and Java Champion

By Eclipse Foundation Team  “Everything I have is thanks to Java and open source” When you meet Eudris Cabrera, one of today’s most active Latin American voices in the Java and open source world, you quickly notice – apart from the genuine enthusiasm he radiates – that his story is much bigger than code. It […]

Caribbean contributors: Fred Peña’s journey into Java and open source

By Eclipse Foundation Team  “Different opinions create better solutions” When Fred Peña saw a friend programming as a 13-year-old teen in Monte Cristi, Dominican Republic, he could hardly imagine that this curiosity would grow into a lifelong passion for technology, teaching, and community building. Fast forward 22 years: Today, “Freddy” is a recognised leader in […]