What Open Source Taught Me: Boosting Efficiency, Product Thinking, and Passion

At the 2021 Ant Technology Day, the Ant Open‑Source Community hosted a session where the speaker, Yu Bo, presented "What Open Source Has Given Me" and provided a visual summary of his talk.

My Open‑Source Journey

From 2009 to 2018, the speaker spent nearly ten years contributing to open‑source projects, starting with personal projects on Google Code and registering on GitHub in the summer of 2009. He mentions early involvement with Sea.js, the Kissy project during the Taobao era, the short‑lived Arale project, Ant Design, AntV data‑visualization, as well as notable contributions from the Experience Technology Department such as egg.js and Chair.

Takeaway One: Efficient Work Habits

The speaker emphasizes three key points, the first being the cultivation of efficient work habits, which include a "documentation‑first" approach and asynchronous collaboration.

Documentation‑first: He recalls participating in the CommonJS open organization around 2010, where experts heavily emphasized documentation. Through wiki systems and Google Groups, they discussed module definitions and drafted specifications, producing documents that greatly benefited the industry.

Asynchronous collaboration: Tools like GitHub issues and Google Groups enable efficient, async communication, which he advocates for internal use, suggesting that an issue on DingTalk could be faster than a direct message.

He also stresses the importance of "seeking consensus while respecting differences," citing examples where contributors sacrificed personal code to maintain community harmony.

Takeaway Two: Learning Product Thinking

When treating open‑source projects as products, the speaker outlines three essential questions:

Why should we build this project when similar solutions already exist?

What makes us uniquely positioned to succeed?

What are the boundaries and when should the project stop growing?

He illustrates these with AntV's G2, explaining that the decision to focus on a graphic grammar rather than configuration‑based visualizations gave G2 a competitive edge.

Takeaway Three: Passion for the Work

The final point is the deep love for open‑source work. He reflects on personal experiences, including the emotional impact of a documentary about Yuan Lao, and argues that true passion transforms work into a fulfilling mission.

He concludes that open‑source participation fosters efficient habits, product insight, and lasting passion, which together reshape one’s perspective on career and life.