From First PR to PMC: My Journey Contributing to Apache Calcite

Interview with ByteDance infrastructure streaming computing engineer Li Benchao, who started contributing to Apache Calcite in March 2022 and now serves as both Calcite PMC and Flink PMC.

He explains how his work on Flink SQL led him to discover Calcite, a pure‑technical community without commercial backing, offering powerful SQL parsing, validation, and optimization capabilities that many Apache projects rely on.

His first PR fixed a JSON function defect in Calcite, which was merged within an hour, and soon after he was invited to become a community Committer and later a PMC, where he also mentors other contributors.

His contributions span sub‑query optimization, join optimization, JSON function improvement, JDBC adapter, and general expression optimizations, as well as active participation in discussions, PR reviews, and user support.

Open source, a path of technical growth

He emphasizes that contributing to a complex project like Calcite is a continuous learning process, requiring deep understanding of the architecture and constant engagement with the community.

Beyond code, contributions include documentation, testing, build improvements, and community support, all of which build trust and can lead to roles such as Committer or PMC.

Some thoughts and advice

Participating in open source offers personal benefits such as improved technical skills, a network of like‑minded peers, and increased personal influence, while also helping teams raise technical standards and companies enhance their external technical reputation.

He hopes everyone can enjoy open‑source contributions and keep the passion alive.