Open Source

15 Years of Open Source Experience

I believe that participation in open source as a movement takes all of us working in whatever capacity we can. There are a lot of avenues to engage, and I've occupied roles as user, contributor, maintainer, and mentor during my career. We are part of something larger than our current issue, project, role, or company.

It's the contributions, large and small, sustained and one-time, that add up to more. I share some of my work here as a chronicle of this spectrum of engagement. favicon for https://github.com/bmuenzenmeyerGitHub timelines only tell part of the story, so here's the rest:

User

I started like a lot of folks in the web industry did: by scratching my own itch on hobbyist websites. A life-long passion for Star Wars led me as a teen to favicon for https://tc.emperorshammer.org/flight simulator clubs. I built basic HTML and frames websites for my squadrons, and even wrote a course on dogfighting tactics. Here, and early in school I learned of favicon for https://www.jquery.comjQuery, web standards, and the broader web around me.

A pivot point for me was attending favicon for https://www.aneventapart.com/An Event Apart Atlanta. It was there I met so many of the folks then and still impactful to my career. favicon for https://ethanmarcotte.com/Ethan Marcotte signed my copy of favicon for https://abookapart.com/products/responsive-web-designResponsive Web Design. It was there I created my Twitter account. It exposed me to systems and tools to create component-based web designs. These were proto-design systems, and I was hooked.

Contributor

My first open source work was favicon for https://compassrose.netlify.appcompassro.se, circa 2011. It, and much of my work and play at the time, was jQuery-based.

I participated in the early exploration into the <picture/> element via the favicon for https://github.com/ResponsiveImagesCGResponsive Issues Community Group, demos, and polyfills like favicon for https://github.com/scottjehl/picturefillpicturefill. Web standards, being built in the open!

I dabbled a bit in component-design tooling, soaking up these favicon for https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/pull/4968Bootstraps, Foundations, favicon for https://mui.com/core/Material, and more. Somehow, I found favicon for https://patternlab.io/Pattern Lab.

More and more, professional work exposed me to open source software. Helping others learn the react ecosystem at Target led to small contributions to a whole host of new-to-me tools, like favicon for https://redux.js.org/redux, favicon for https://create-react-app.dev/create-react-app, favicon for https://verdaccio.org/verdaccio, favicon for https://intuit.github.io/auto/auto, favicon for https://airbnb.io/ts-migrate, favicon for https://postcss.org/postcss, favicon for https://authjs.dev/Auth.js, favicon for https://pnpm.io/pnpm, favicon for https://nextjs.org/Next.js, favicon for https://turbo.build/turborepo, and Target's in-house CI tool favicon for https://go-vela.github.io/docs/Vela. Not all of these efforts were large, and that's the point!

Revisiting the spirit of my early involvement with foundation tech, I improved the commons at favicon for https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/mdn, and waded into the world of favicon for https://nodejs.org/Node.js, joining their org as an issue triager and reviewer. Open source runs on the healthy intersection of community and backlog, so helping in this small way feels great. Best of all, I am exposed to a lot of different perspectives and learn a lot via osmosis, all while on the clock.

Maintainer

With Pattern Lab I found an outlet for an itch I had really just began to scratch. Sustained contribution through my fork favicon for https://github.com/pattern-lab/patternlab-nodePattern Lab Node taught me so many things—chief among them the balance between done and perfect, the iterative necessity of open source engineering, the value of unit tests, how to build a community, and favicon for https://brianmuenzenmeyer.com/posts/2018-i-maintainer/how to wrestle with burnout. I could go on and on. I owe my current job, this house, and so many friends to this little open source project.

Pattern Lab work extended to my time at favicon for https://roydan.com/Roydan Enterprises . I am grateful for this early investment of open source software from a tiny company.

Marty Henderson and I open sourced a tool called favicon for https://www.npmjs.com/package/markdown-injectmarkdown-inject, which has been a fun outlet for learning things like GitHub actions. I'm so glad that favicon for https://opensource.target.com/Target understands the value of open source software.

This work also re-invigorated my desire to maintain software again, which I've re-approached with favicon for https://makeapullre.quest/makeapullre.quest and favicon for https://www.npmjs.com/package/eleventy-plugin-inline-link-faviconeleventy-plugin-inline-link-favicon. You can see the later's output prominently on this page.

Recently, I've joined the favicon for https://nodejs.orgnodejs.org website team, an experience that is helping me contribute and learn from others. 11 months of work in 2023 and 2024 culminated in a redesign of the site, and I'm so proud of the work we've done together. Truly a collective, open effort spanning the globe. I wrote a deep dive on the favicon for https://nodejs.org/en/blog/announcements/diving-into-the-nodejs-website-redesignNode.js blog.

Mentor

I was fortunate enough to participate as a mentee in Mozilla's favicon for https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/mozilla-open-leaders/Open Leaders program. This was my first exposure to organized community-building and professional development. It was inspiring to learn and connect with others looking to build one another up.

My opportunity to mentor came from the experience of a lifetime, volunteering during favicon for https://ghc.anitab.org/programs-and-awards/open-source-day/Open Source Day at Grace Hopper celebration. I worked with dozens of attendees to get their local environment setup and ready to make contributions to the Node.js project. This felt so intimidating, (even to me!) but wow was it energizing to see new faces just as eager to engage in open source software. Again, it was so so great to be empowered to do this by my employer.

Mentoring and enablement comes in many forms. One I am very proud of is favicon for https://tech.target.com/blog/open-source-fundTarget's Open Source Fund. Our commitment to the open source ecosystem here is just the beginning, and I'm excited to see where it goes.