From Contributor to Maintainer: My LFX Mentorship Journey

👋 Hi everyone! I’m Jayesh Savaliya, a B.Tech student at IIIT Pune, passionate about backend technologies and the open source ecosystem. Over the last two years, I’ve had the honor of being selected for C4GT program twice (2024 & 2025) and recently cracked LFX Mentorship 2025 (Term 1).

In this blog, I’ll walk you through:

• How I began my open source journey
• My strategies to crack open source programs like LFX
• What Kmesh is and what made me choose it
• How I went from contributor to maintainer
• Some practical advice to grow your skills and open source profile

🌐 What is Kmesh?

During my LFX mentorship, I contributed to **Kmesh, a high-performance service grid data plane software. Kmesh is built on top of eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) and programmable kernel technologies**.

What makes Kmesh unique is its sidecarless architecture — it doesn’t require deploying proxy components on the data plane like traditional service meshes (e.g., Istio). This results in:

• Better forwarding performance
• Lower resource overhead
• Efficient service governance directly within the kernel

As a backend and systems enthusiast, working on a project that blends networking, Linux internals, and performance optimization was incredibly exciting for me.

📚 What is the LFX Mentorship Program?

The Linux Foundation Mentorship Program (LFX) is designed to introduce new contributors to the open source world. Similar to GSoC, C4GT, and Outreachy, it provides:

• A structured environment for learning
• Real-world open source projects
• Supportive mentorship from experienced maintainers

It’s a great opportunity not only to improve your skills but to make a real impact on important open source infrastructure.

🚀 My Open Source Journey at LFX

When I applied to LFX, I wasn’t entirely new to open source. I had contributed to:

• Sunbird (EkStep Foundation) via C4GT
• Mifos, a GSoC org focused on financial services
• A few other backend projects aligned with my skill set

🔍 Choosing the Right Project

I shortlisted 2–3 projects from the LFX portal based on:

• Tech stack relevance (backend, Linux, performance)
• My learning goals
• Active maintainers

Eventually, I chose Kmesh — a decision I’m grateful for every day.

💡 How to Crack an Open Source Program (My Advice)

Here’s my personal 3-step formula that helped me succeed in LFX, and can help you too:

1. ✅ Make Meaningful Contributions

Start small: fix bugs, add logs, improve docs. Then scale up to core contributions. This shows mentors you understand the project.

2. 📝 Write a Strong Proposal

Make your proposal clean, structured, and convincing. Clearly outline:

• Your understanding of the problem
• Timeline with milestones
• What makes you capable of completing it

3. 💬 Be Actively Involved

Stay present in project channels (Slack, Discord, mailing lists). Communicate with mentors. Don’t hesitate to ask or suggest.

If you do these three things well — contribute, propose, communicate — you’ll stand out.

👨‍💻 How I Became a Maintainer at Kmesh

Becoming a maintainer wasn’t something I planned — it happened naturally through the mentorship journey.

Here’s how:

• Consistency: I didn’t stop at just a few PRs. I kept contributing week after week — fixing bugs, adding features, refactoring code.
• Learning Mindset: I embraced every learning curve — from eBPF concepts to performance optimization to CI/CD improvements.
• Patience & Feedback: I took feedback seriously, iterated quickly, and stayed patient even when things broke.
• Initiative: I started suggesting improvements to the project, wrote better tests, automated tasks, and reviewed others’ contributions.

Because of this dedication and trust I built with the Kmesh maintainers, by the end of my mentorship, I was granted maintainer access.

It was a proud moment. From someone fixing simple issues to becoming a core part of the team — the journey was truly fulfilling.

🎯 Key Takeaways for Aspiring Contributors

• 🧱 Start small, but stay consistent
• 🎯 Focus on learning, not just selection
• 📢 Communicate actively and respectfully
• 🚀 Don’t be afraid to suggest improvements
• 🛠️ Embrace feedback, and be solution-oriented

You don’t need to be a genius — you just need to show up, contribute, and improve every day.

🙌 Final Thoughts

The LFX Mentorship not only helped me improve my technical skills, but also taught me how to work with a global, collaborative team, think critically about production-grade software, and grow into a leadership role in the community.

If I can go from contributor to maintainer, so can you.

Let’s keep building, learning, and supporting each other in this amazing open source ecosystem.

📬 Feel free to connect with me: 🔗 LinkedIn 💻 GitHub

Thanks for reading — see you in the next PR 🚀