DevOps and Infrastructure Projects
GitOps, IaC, container runtimes, and observability projects. Mostly Go, some TypeScript.
GitOps and CD
ArgoCD - Declarative GitOps CD
| Repo | argoproj/argo-cd |
| Stars | 21.9k |
| Language | Go |
| CNCF | Graduated |
| What it does | Declarative GitOps continuous delivery for Kubernetes |
| Why contribute | Industry standard GitOps tool. Large active community. |
| Entry points | UI improvements, CLI features, bug fixes, docs |
Flux - GitOps Toolkit
| Repo | fluxcd/flux2 |
| Stars | 7.8k |
| Language | Go |
| CNCF | Graduated |
| What it does | GitOps toolkit for Kubernetes -- keeps clusters in sync with git repos |
| Why contribute | CNCF graduated, clean Go codebase, controller-based architecture. |
Infrastructure as Code
OpenTofu - Open Source Terraform
| Repo | opentofu/opentofu |
| Stars | 27.7k |
| Language | Go |
| Good First Issues | 5 open |
| What it does | Community-driven open source Terraform fork |
| Why contribute | Fully open source, growing fast. Terraform-compatible. |
Crossplane - Cloud Control Plane
| Repo | crossplane/crossplane |
| Stars | 11.4k |
| Language | Go |
| CNCF | Incubating |
| What it does | Build cloud APIs and manage infrastructure using Kubernetes-style resources |
| Why contribute | Multi-cloud IaC via K8s CRDs. Growing 20+ pct contributor base yearly. |
Container Runtimes
containerd - Industry Standard Runtime
| Repo | containerd/containerd |
| Stars | 20.2k |
| Language | Go |
| CNCF | Graduated |
| What it does | Industry-standard container runtime used by Docker and Kubernetes |
| Why contribute | Core infrastructure. Understanding containerd means understanding how containers work. |
| Challenge | Complex codebase, no labeled beginner issues. |
Podman - Daemonless Containers
| Repo | containers/podman |
| Stars | 26k+ |
| Language | Go |
| What it does | Daemonless container engine -- drop-in replacement for Docker |
| Why contribute | Red Hat backed. Rootless containers, Kubernetes pod support. |
Kaniko - Build Containers in Kubernetes
| Repo | GoogleContainerTools/kaniko |
| Stars | 15.7k |
| Language | Go |
| What it does | Build container images in Kubernetes without Docker daemon |
| Why contribute | Google-backed. Solves real CI/CD problem. |
Observability
Prometheus - Monitoring
| Repo | prometheus/prometheus |
| Stars | 62.5k |
| Language | Go |
| CNCF | Graduated |
| What it does | Time-series monitoring and alerting toolkit |
| Why contribute | The standard for cloud-native monitoring. PromQL, exporters, alerting. |
Grafana - Visualization
| Repo | grafana/grafana |
| Stars | 72k |
| Language | TypeScript + Go |
| What it does | Dashboards and visualization for monitoring data |
| Why contribute | Massive project. Frontend (React/TS) and backend (Go) opportunities. |
Loki - Log Aggregation
| Repo | grafana/loki |
| Stars | 27.5k |
| Language | Go |
| Good First Issues | 12 open |
| CNCF | Incubating |
| What it does | Horizontally-scalable log aggregation inspired by Prometheus |
Developer Tools
Gitea - Self-Hosted Git
| Repo | go-gitea/gitea |
| Stars | 50k+ |
| Language | Go |
| What it does | Painless self-hosted all-in-one DevOps platform (Git, CI/CD, packages) |
| Why contribute | Active community, clean Go codebase, broad feature set. |
N8N - Workflow Automation
| Repo | n8n-io/n8n |
| Stars | 60k+ |
| Language | TypeScript |
| What it does | Workflow automation tool -- connect APIs without code |
| Why contribute | Massive user base. Integrations are easy to add. |