Open source
At Aiven, open source is at the core of everything we do – from our culture of open-mindedness, to our desire to contribute and keep giving back to the world.
Vision and mission
Aiven is founded – and grounded – in open source. While we make open source technology easy to implement, we want to be much more than just a consumer of open source code and a provider of open source services.
We give back to the open source community by actively contributing to all areas that touch the professional lives of open source creators and maintainers. We also foster the community by keeping open source truly open, ensuring the best open source data technology always remains available to everyone.
At Aiven, we wear our open source hearts on our sleeves.
Giving back
We want to ensure the future of open source software – the bedrock that global data infrastructure is built upon.
We make sure that critical code and software is actively and sustainably maintained. This applies to both the actual OSS projects that Aiven directly uses and contributes to and to the entire OSS ecosystem.
We aim to help make open source projects better – and not just for us. Openness benefits everyone.
We’re constructive contributors and celebrate the diversity and independence of the open source community.
We have no hidden agendas, and ensure projects don’t depend on one organization or individual for their survival.
As well as relieving the burden on maintainers, we also work on documentation, reviews and knowledge sharing.
Aiven contributions
Aiven owns and maintains multiple open source projects – here are a few of our main repos and other projects we help maintain.
We welcome contributions to all our projects. You can find links to the GitHub repos in the project list below, or check out the rest of Aiven’s projects on GitHub.
PostgreSQL®
PGHoard is a python-based backup daemon and restore tooling for PostgreSQL. It uses cloud object stores to store the backup data. We use this tool in our own setup and it is also relied upon by others.
We also have a sister project to PGHoard called MyHoard which offers similar functionality for MySQL.
Apache Kafka® is a powerful open source event streaming tool for those needing to collect, process, store and analyze data.
Aiven’s OSPO team has developers dedicated to contributing to the Apache Kafka® community in different areas (mainly around Apache Kafka Connect), including a committer on the project.
PostgreSQL® – an open source object-relational database system with over 35 years of active development – has a strong reputation for reliability, feature robustness, and performance.
Aiven’s OSPO team has dedicated developers who are long time contributors to the PostgreSQL® community.
Apache Flink® is a framework and distributed processing engine for stateful computations over unbounded and bounded data streams.
Aiven’s OSPO team has developers dedicated to contributing to the Apache Flink® community in different areas, including a committer on the project.
OpenSearch® is a community-driven, Apache 2.0-licensed open source search and analytics suite forked from Elasticsearch. OpenSearch makes it easy to ingest, search, visualize, and analyze data.
Aiven’s OSPO team has dedicated developers who are long time contributors to the OpenSearch® community, including a committer on the project.
Supporting Aiven developers
At Aiven, we want to support our employees in their endeavors, and also contribute to society as a whole. We have a scheme called the "Plankton Program" that allows employees to claim compensation for the (limited) time they spend on open source activities outside of work. Many of our employees make open source contributions at work, on our own projects or on the upstream projects or other industry tools - and those are all on work time of course.
The Plankton Program allows us to support and recognize the extra work and small improvements to the ecosystem that our employees are making outside of what is strictly required of them. We are proud of our people and happy to support their work!
