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added interview of Aisuko Li
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‎src/collections/blog/2024/09-27-meet-the-maintainer-aisuko-li/aisuko-li-layer5-maintainer.png

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‎src/collections/blog/2024/09-27-meet-the-maintainer-aisuko-li/post.mdx

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---
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title: "Meet the Maintainer: Aisuko Li"
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subtitle: "An interview series with open source maintainers"
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date: 2024-09-27 10:30:05 -0530
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author: Anita Ihuman
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thumbnail: ./aisuko-li-layer5-maintainer.png
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darkthumbnail: ./aisuko-li-layer5-maintainer.png
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description: Meet the Maintainer series with open source maintainer, Aisuko Li
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type: Blog
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category: Open Source
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tags:
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- Open Source
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featured: false
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published: true
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---
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import { BlogWrapper } from "../../Blog.style.js";
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import img from "./aisuko-li-layer5-maintainer.png";
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import { MeetTheMaintainer } from "../../MeetTheMaintainer.style.js";
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import { Link } from "gatsby";
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import ForkLift from "../../../../assets/images/app/hero/forklift.svg";
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<BlogWrapper>
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<MeetTheMaintainer>
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<div class="intro">
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<p>
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Continuing in our Meet the Maintainer series, we have{" "}
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<Link to="/community/members/aisuko-li">Aisuko Li</Link>. Aisuko is a
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maintainer of the{" "}
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<Link to="/cloud-native-management/meshery"> Meshery Adapters</Link>{" "}
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project. In this interview, we get to know Aisuko a little better and learn
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about his journey as an open source project maintainer and with Layer5
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community.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewer">
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<span>Anita:</span>
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<p>
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Aisuko, thank you for joining me today. Many people inside and outside of
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the Layer5 Community have seen the effects of your contributions, but may
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not know the backstory as to who Aisuko is and how you arrived at your
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maintainer role. Indulge us. How did you discover the Layer5 community? What
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made you stay?
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewee">
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<span>Aisuko:</span>
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<p>
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Thanks for having me here. Actually, Aisuko is my code name. My real name is Bowen Li. I love both of
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I used to work for RancherLabs for a while, and I worked to maintain the official Helm (a third-party management tool for Kubernetes manifests) charts repo. These experiences helped me contribute to creating and maintaining Meshery Helm charts.
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<br />
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I like open source software, and I love contributing to the community.
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The more you contribute, the more permission you get to help the
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community grow and improve.
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<br />
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The Layer5 community is a true open source community. Everyone here can find
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a comfortable role. I have been here since 2019 (a long time ago). I’ve seen
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new members join and some leave. It's great to see people work together without
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any other conditions. This is one of the ways I have fun.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewer">
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<span>Anita:</span>
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<p>
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You’ve been consistently contributing to a large number of Layer5 projects
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(Meshery adapters, mesheryctl, SMI, SMP). Layer5 has a large collection of
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active projects. Which one are you currently focusing on? <i>Psst.</i> Also,
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which one’s your favorite? I won’t tell.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewee">
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<span>Aisuko:</span>
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<p>
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Actually, the Meshery project in 2021-2022 has changed a lot. More skilled and
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talented contributors joined the community. They are so professional and
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active, and their hard work has made Meshery more powerful than before. For
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instance, projects like `meshkit` and `meshsync` have grown significantly.
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It’s great to have such a strong team working together.
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<br />
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Right now, I am primarily focusing on the `meshery-operator` project and
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`meshery-linkerd`, along with fixing bugs across all the projects. I always
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aim to make all the projects more controllable and maintain high code quality.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewer">
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<span>Anita:</span>
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<p>
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Have you worked with any other open source projects? How does Layer5 compare?
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewee">
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<span>Aisuko:</span>
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<p>
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I was active in the Rancher community and the Helm charts project, where I owned
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three charts. I’m also still a maintainer of the GNU Hurd. Recently, I’ve been
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working on contributions to Kubernetes community projects as well.
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<br />
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Compared to the Layer5 community, the Kubernetes community is much larger.
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Many members are not very active, so it can be difficult to get feedback
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on PRs and issues from inactive members.
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<br />
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The GNU Hurd project is unique, so there’s no need to compare it with others.
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In the Layer5 community, we have a warm welcome for new contributors, and most
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projects have active reviewers who provide feedback quickly.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewer">
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<span>Anita:</span>
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<p>What is so fascinating about service meshes?</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewee">
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<span>Aisuko:</span>
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<p>
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Service mesh is a concept that goes beyond traditional thinking. It has many
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useful features that support microservices, like providing visibility into
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internal traffic, enabling mTLS connections, and offering flexible ways to
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release new service versions—all without any changes to the service code.
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<br />
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The most important point is that service mesh gives control back to the end-users.
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They can monitor and manage traffic details, which would be difficult to do without
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service mesh features.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewer">
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<span>Anita:</span>
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<p>Fascinating. Why did you pick service meshes specifically, though?</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewee">
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<span>Aisuko:</span>
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<p>
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I have worked with many middle- and small-sized companies that wanted to migrate
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to the cloud. It’s easy to move to Kubernetes, but it’s hard to ensure everything
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runs smoothly. You have limited visibility into what’s happening in the cluster,
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and service mesh solves that problem by showing real-time traffic.
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<br />
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Service mesh provides direct insights into traffic flows, which is its most useful feature.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewer">
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<span>Anita:</span>
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<p>
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Haha. Leading on from that, what should Meshery dream about next? What can we hope
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to contribute to the service mesh landscape in your opinion?
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewee">
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<span>Aisuko:</span>
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<p>
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I once talked to Lee, the founder of Layer5. Due to time zone differences, we don’t
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get many chances to discuss things directly. But I believe we don’t need to create
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a new service mesh.
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<br />
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What we should do is provide third-party performance tools for existing service
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mesh projects. We should give the choice back to the users, letting them pick the
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service mesh that best suits their needs.
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<br />
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We should contribute to SMI and CNCF projects, helping to define performance standards
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for the cloud-native industry. That’s why I’m keen on joining these communities.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewer">
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<span>Anita:</span>
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<p>
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Interesting. Do expand on that. What do you think Meshery could offer, in addition to what it already does?
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewee">
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<span>Aisuko:</span>
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<p>
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I believe we can offer a CNCF-standard performance tool for all service mesh
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applications. We can collaborate with service mesh maintainers to define these
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standards, which would be beneficial for end-users. It’s similar to what we did
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with SMI.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewer">
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<span>Anita:</span>
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<p>What are today's challenges when working with service meshes?</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewee">
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<span>Aisuko:</span>
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<p>
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Even though service mesh has many features, it's still not always stable in production.
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I remember that even Istio (v1.1x) couldn’t be upgraded to newer versions easily.
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<br />
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Additionally, we don’t often get test results from real production environments.
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Right now, the focus is on multi-cluster service mesh capabilities, which brings
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new challenges.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewer">
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<span>Anita:</span>
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<p>
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That’s good to hear. What do you think we should look forward to with respect to service mesh development?
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewee">
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<span>Aisuko:</span>
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<p>
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I’ve worked with service mesh applications like Linkerd2, Istio, and OSM in development environments. OSM is my preference because it’s modular and has a simpler architecture compared to others.
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<br />
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From my experience, I believe that not all environments need all the features of a service mesh. Some middle or small companies may only need visibility into traffic flows without complex features like mTLS.
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<br />
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So, we should focus on simple architecture and features. For example, integrating traffic visualization with Ingress, so users don’t need to create new custom resources to track traffic.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewer">
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<span>Anita:</span>
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<p>
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Ah, while I have you here, let me get more reading recommendations lined up.
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Cloud Native and especially the field of service meshes is evolving
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exceptionally fast. Keeping up with all the developments can be challenging.
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Which resources do you use to stay up-to-date?
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewee">
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<span>Aisuko:</span>
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<p>
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People are always interested in new technology, but we are limited by time. I believe
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that continuing to contribute to the service mesh open source community is the best way
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to stay updated.
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<br />
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Articles and news may include the author’s personal opinions, and we don't always know
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if they have strong relationships with the community. We should maintain critical thinking
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and focus on solving real-world problems. The best way to learn is through hands-on experience.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewer">
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<span>Anita:</span>
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<p>
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What does being a Meshery maintainer mean to you? How has being a maintainer impacted your full-time role?
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewee">
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<span>Aisuko:</span>
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<p>
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It’s an honor to be a maintainer of the Meshery community. The membership
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is a reward for contributing to the community. Being a maintainer has made me
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more enthusiastic about contributing to open source projects. It has also given
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me confidence to contribute to other projects.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewer">
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<span>Anita:</span>
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<p>
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Do you have any advice for individuals hoping to become Layer5 contributors
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or potentially maintainers?
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="interviewee">
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<span>Aisuko:</span>
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<p>
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The Layer5 and Meshery communities are always welcoming to everyone.
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New features are great, but there’s more to contributing than just code.
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For example, writing unit tests and code comments is just as important as
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adding new features.
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<br />
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One of our goals is to provide an opportunity for everyone who wants to contribute
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to open source projects, so we need to maintain a high level of code quality.
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</p>
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</div>
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<div class="note">
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<img src={ForkLift} height="100px" />
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<p>
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The Meshery project moves at an impressive pace thanks to maintainers like
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Aisuko. Be like Aisuko. Join the{" "}
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<a href="https://slack.layer5.io">Layer5 Slack</a> and say “hi".
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</p>
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</div>
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</MeetTheMaintainer>
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</BlogWrapper>

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