Open Source Heroes: Kyle Mathews

Open Source Heroes is a series dedicated to recognizing and sponsoring up-and-coming open source developers who are motivated to unleash their potential every day.

“Thanks for listening, go follow me on Twitter and contribute to my open source project.” That’s what you usually hear at the end of a developer’s talk at a conference.

But when we heard Kyle Mathews give his lightning talk at React.js Conf 2016, his final line grabbed our attention:

“I really believe that innovation is a choice. Everyone who contributes to open source, you didn’t have to do that — but you did. And you made my life better and a lot of other people’s lives better.”

He’s not only humble and grateful, he’s courageous.

In August, he quit his job to work full-time on his open source projects, Gatsby.js and Typography.js. You won’t find many (if any) developers in San Francisco doing that, especially for the sake of not trying to make money necessarily, but because he wants to help shape the future of the web.

He’s also one of the few developers who has a vision and an unstoppable desire to see it come to life. You can see it just by the incredible work he’s put into building, maintaining and marketing his projects.

We need more developers like Kyle, developers with passion, heart, noble intentions, and who care about UX/design (perhaps it’s with people like Kyle we’ll start to bridge the dev/design gap).

Kyle Mathews is a name you will remember one day.

For that reason, we’re happy to contribute $100/mo toward Kyle’s project, Gatsby, via OpenCollective. It is thanks to motivated, extraordinary people like Kyle that the web continues to evolve and we are grateful for his dedication and ability to unleash.

We support you, Kyle. Keep that unstoppable momentum and courage going. Commit. Push. Unleash.