From Student to Apache IoTDB Committer
On September 9, 2025, following a community vote, Lin Xintao was officially elected as a Committer of the Apache IoTDB project.
Growing from a student contributor into a core committer of an Apache Top-Level Project, Lin describes his motivation in simple terms:
“Being able to contribute to a top-tier open source project, and seeing my work actually used in real production systems, gives me a strong sense of purpose and fulfillment.”
Lin earned his bachelor’s degree from the School of Software at Tsinghua University and is currently pursuing a master’s degree at the same institution. He began contributing to Apache IoTDB in April 2023 and has been an active contributor ever since.
About Apache IoTDB
Q: How did you first learn about Apache IoTDB?
I first encountered Apache IoTDB during my junior year as an undergraduate. In a database course taught by Professor Jianmin Wang, Tsinghua University, IoTDB was introduced as an Apache Top-Level Project incubated at the School of Software, Tsinghua University. That immediately caught my attention.
Later, I explored the IoTDB official website and its GitHub repositories in more depth. I became increasingly interested not only in its technical architecture, but also in how the community collaborates to drive feature iteration and long-term technical evolution.
Q: What made you decide to get involved in the Apache IoTDB project?
In April 2023, I joined the research team at the School of Software working on IoTDB as an intern. I was quickly drawn to the open and collaborative atmosphere, as well as the enthusiasm and mentorship from senior contributors.
Under the guidance of senior contributors Yukun Zhou and Yanze Chen, I began working on metadata management. Watching the system gradually improve through my own optimizations kept me deeply engaged and gave me a strong sense of achievement.
At the same time, I realized that IoTDB had already been deployed in many critical industrial scenarios. Being able to see my contributions run in real production environments through an open source community made the work feel genuinely meaningful. These experiences convinced me to continue contributing to Apache IoTDB through open source.
Q: Which areas of Apache IoTDB do you mainly work on?
My work primarily focuses on the query engine and metadata management engine, including:
Optimizing PBTree index concurrency and metadata storage structures to improve performance and scalability.
Implementing a set of SQL scalar functions, and refactoring the
LIKEand regular expression matching engine.Designing and implementing streaming time-series shape similarity search capabilities inspired by the Qetch approach.
Q: What have you gained from participating in the Apache IoTDB project?
Overall, contributing to IoTDB has been a very positive and rewarding experience👇
First, it strengthened my ability to think systematically. In production-grade infrastructure software, factors such as real-world requirements, architectural design, and operational stability all matter. Designing and implementing features in such an environment requires a much more holistic mindset.
Second, my collaboration and communication skills improved significantly. I’ve learned not only how to contribute as a team member, but also how to lead discussions, conduct reviews, and clearly communicate design decisions through documentation and technical discussions.
Third, it improved my time management skills and professional identity. Balancing academic work with a fast-paced open source project — while seeing my code used in real industrial systems — and being part of a high-quality technical community has given me a strong and lasting sense of accomplishment.
Q: Is there a memorable experience you’d like to share?
One particularly memorable experience was a collaboration with an airline company.
During the initial validation phase, we modeled their business data, developed efficient parsing and ingestion pipelines, and loaded the data into IoTDB. Compared with traditional solutions, both storage and query performance improved significantly.
However, once we entered their actual production environment, we realized that “whether a feature can be implemented” was not the top priority. Usability and stability were just as critical. Software not only needs to work — it needs to be easy to use and reliable in the long term.
After more than a month of continuous refinement, we delivered a complete IoTDB-based data management solution. It was highly recognized by the airline’s technical experts and has since played a real role in their digital transformation, data asset utilization, and intelligent analytics. For me, it was a grounded yet deeply rewarding experience.
Q: What helped you stay committed and eventually become a Committer?
What kept me going was a continuous sense of achievement and real-world impact.
On one hand, I could clearly see the system evolving — features improving, issues being fixed, and the project steadily becoming better. On the other hand, IoTDB supports real-world workloads for many well-known enterprises. Through ongoing collaboration, I gained deeper insights into system architecture and implementation details, and saw firsthand the value IoTDB delivers in critical industrial scenarios.
Apache IoTDB is not only an open source industrial database that is usable, reliable, and practical, but also a project with strong expectations around AI-driven capabilities and performance leadership. Contributing to such a project gives me a strong sense of pride and responsibility, which ultimately motivated me to take on the role of Committer.
About the Open Source Community
Q: Did you have any open source experience? Has your view of open source changed?
Before IoTDB, I had very limited experience with open source. Apache IoTDB was the first project where I truly participated deeply.
Through this experience, I came to appreciate how open source communities drive the evolution of foundational software like databases. Real feedback from users and developers in production environments allows features to adapt more quickly to real-world needs and helps the project mature continuously.
I also gained a deeper understanding of the Apache Software Foundation’s philosophy of “Community Over Code.” Open source is not just about making code public — it’s about collaborative innovation and knowledge sharing, bringing together people with shared goals to build high-quality software together.
Q: What value does the open source community bring to Apache IoTDB?
I think the community adds value in three key ways:
It significantly increases visibility and credibility, helping IoTDB be recognized as an open and trustworthy piece of infrastructure software.
It brings in real-world requirements and feedback from production environments, continuously driving feature evolution and ecosystem maturity.
It connects developers from different organizations and regions on a shared collaboration platform, enabling a level of cross-boundary cooperation that would be difficult for any single company to achieve alone.
Q: Any advice for newcomers who want to contribute to Apache IoTDB?
We warmly welcome anyone interested in contributing to Apache IoTDB.
My advice is to first get IoTDB running locally, use it actively, and ask questions. Raising issues on the mailing list or GitHub is both a learning process and a form of contribution.
For code contributions, beginners can start with documentation improvements, small bug fixes, or Good First Issues. Through code reviews, you’ll become familiar with the codebase and module structure before gradually taking on larger features.
Non-code contributions are equally important. Participating in technical discussions, sharing user experiences, or trying to answer questions can all help you integrate into the community more quickly.
Most importantly, don’t wait until you feel “ready” — just start contributing.
Becoming a Committer: Growing with the Apache IoTDB Community
For me, becoming an Apache IoTDB Committer is both an honor and a responsibility.
Since joining the community, I’ve benefited greatly from the patience and guidance of experienced contributors. Now, being able to help newcomers through reviews and discussions feels like both a continuation of that spirit and a new stage of growth.
The Committer role represents the community’s trust in my work and reminds me to hold myself to higher standards, continue contributing consistently, and give back to the community. I look forward to growing together with more contributors in the Apache IoTDB community over the long term.
