Hero Open Source Developer

This project has been discontinued

As we take on new projects, some of the older ones are no longer updated from our side. This also means that when external domains we link to are no longer maintained or expire we might not have been alerted to it. However, this doesn’t mean that we want you to stop using, exploring or contributing to the projects.

One of the goals in Sony’s Open Device projects is to replace as many pre-built binaries as possible with features and functionalities that can be built from AOSP source code. In this on-going work, we have received important contributions from many of you open source community developers. To recognize your work, we will acknowledge a selected Hero Open Source Developer once every three months.

The Hero Open Source Developer will be the person who submits the best accepted commits to any open source project or to our Open Device projects on SonyXperiaDev GitHub. The Hero Open Source Developer will be presented here and will receive a device from Sony as a reward.

To take part and potentially become a Hero Open Source Developer, simply submit your commits to our Open Device projects on the SonyXperiaDev GitHub.

Anyone submitting to our open source projects can be selected as Hero Open Source Developer, except for Sony Mobile partners or employees working with Sony Developer World. A developer cannot be selected as Hero Open Source Developer more than once per year. We will select a new winner once every four months.

List of Hero Open Source Developers

(2015-2020)

Liang Shuang

Awarded 1st November 2020

Liang Shuang is 21 years old and lives in Chongqing, China. She is a student majoring in nuclear fusion, with a great interest in Smart devices. She started compiling ROMs when she got her first Xperia smart device. ”I tried to learn from commits and wikis. My aim is providing better user experience of Open devices ROMs, then improving my programming skills in this process”, says Liang.

Konrad Dybcio

Awarded 1st July 2020

Konrad Dybcio is 17 years old and lives in ‘a tiny village’ in the Mazowieckie region of Poland. He’s currently enrolled in high school and plans to pursue studies in computer science after graduating. Konrad got into open devices and kernel development when he realized the potential that a regular smartphone can have in a good developer’s hands. Through his work, Konrad has brought Linux support for Nile, Ganges and Kitakami devices. Currently, he’s working to bring Nile and Ganges devices to feature parity with other major open source Linux smartphones.

Marijn Suijten

Awarded 1st April 2020

Marijn Suijten is a 23 years old developer living in The Hague, the Netherlands. He started with web development at the age of 12 and later moved on to application development and high performance, low level computing. Today he studies Game and Media Technology, a computer science track, at Utrecht University. Marijn has contributed to Sony’s Open Devices program with multiple contributions in various project areas. He has done a great job and we want to acknowledge this by once again declaring him a Hero Open Source Developer.

Paul Bouchara

Awarded 1st January 2020

Paul is 19 years old and lives in Toulouse, France, where he studies engineering at the National Institute of Applied Sciences. He started his adventures in customization at the age of 11. After trying out Sony Open Devices code for some time, Paul started creating customizations for his Xperia XZ, “adding a few things here and there”. He contributed to the Sony Open Source program and with the help of the community built several custom ROMs. Once he reached “the perfect fit”, Paul ported with the help of Angelo Gioacchino del Regno, making his custom ROM available for all.

Felix Elsner

Awarded 1st May 2019

Felix is a 23 years old developer living in Karlsruhe, Germany. He started programming in his high school years where he wrote some games in Greenfot/Java. Later he developed interest in server administration and web applications. Today he is a soldier in the German Bundeswehr. About a year after he bought an Xperia XZ he came across Sony’s Open Devices program. His commits have been an important part to make sure that the Sonyxperiadev sources now have an updated SELinux policy. He has also been interested in Project Treble compability. Thanks to some of his commits, the Xperia XZ could run the Android master branch and help with development for the next Android version.

Marijn Suijten

Awarded 1st February 2019

Marijn Suijten is a 23 years old developer living in The Hague, the Netherlands. He started with web development at the age of 12 and later moved on to application development and high performance, low level computing. Today he studies Game and Media Technology, a computer science track, at the Utrecht University. Marijn has contributed to Sony’s Open Devices program with research and an open source HAL implementation for fingerprint sensor, enabling the Nile series of devices to use fingerprint authentication.

Obeida Shamoun

Awarded 1st November 2018

Obeida Shamoun is a 26 years old developer living in Wiesbaden, Germany. He started programming during his final years in high school, which later led him to a computer science degree from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. Obeida has been a long time contributor to the Sony open source projects, where he mainly has worked on the Loire family of devices. His latest contributions included bug fixes on the Loire platform and patching the mainline open source Broadcom Wi-Fi driver to become usable on devices of that platform.

Steph Gosling

Awarded 1st July 2018

Steph Gosling is a SRE and scalability consultant based in London, UK. He has been a part of the Sailfish OS open-source community since 2011 when Jolla was launched, and before that the MeeGo and Maemo communities. In 2017 at the Mobile World Congress, Jolla announced the Sailfish X based on Sony Open Devices Program, so he bought an Xperia X and helped with the community port. He then began working on the hardware adaptation for the Xperia X Compact based on the official Xperia X release.

Pavel Dubrova

Awarded 1st May 2018

Pavel Dubrova is a 23 years old developer from Smela, Ukraine. He is a freelancer with a master’s degree in engineering information technology. At the age of 14 he started with web programming and now he is focusing in Linux kernel and embedded systems, in particular Sony devices. In 2016 he got a Sony Xperia M4 Aqua device and helped to find and fix existing bugs in the Sony Unified 3.10 kernel. He soon began to be engaged in porting MSM8939 SoC to the 4.4 kernel. Today he continue to work with Xperia M4 Aqua but also with Xperia X.

David Viteri

Awarded 1st November (for the period September-October 2016)

David Viteri, of Milan, Italy, is a three time Hero Open Source Developer. He was previously selected due to the large number of commits to our kernel and device projects. This time, David made extensive contributions across all platforms and spent countless hours debugging. He feels the program is important and hopes he can continue to contribute for many years to come.

Adrian Dubuc-Caldirac

Awarded 1st September 2016 (for the period July–August 2016)

Adrian is a 23-year-old student from France who is currently studying his fifth year of engineering in Electronics and Embedded Systems. He was awarded the title as Hero Developer for contributing a way to access recovery mode on Sony AOSP devices. Adrian spends a lot of time on CyanogenMod development and is currently working on several Sony devices as well as AOSP 7.0. He enjoys the collaboration opportunities within the AOSP community and says that the recognition as Hero Developer is both appreciated and unexpected.

Shane Francis

Awarded 1st August 2016 (for the period May–June 2016)

Shane is a 25 year old, self-employed software developer from Norfolk, England who recently became a father for the first time. Shane was named a hero developer thanks to his large contribution of code enabling the AOSP Xperia Z5 phone series to make use of their fingerprint sensors. He enjoys working with friendly and talented people on the Open devices project and looks forward to contributing more in the future.

Florent Revest

Awarded 1^st May 2016 (for the period March-April 2016)

Florent is a 19 year old student living in Toulouse, France. He made a large contribution to Sony’s open source community by bringing the support of Broadcom SoC into Sony’s unified kernel codebase, allowing the unified kernel to work on the Sony Smartwatch 3. Florent loves developing for smartwatches and spends most of his free time doing it. He was delighted to find out that he could collaborate with Sony’s open source community in his efforts. After receiving his title as a Hero Developer, Florent tells us: “I feel proud of having contributed to the Sony’s unified kernel. But I’m also grateful to Sony for this fantastic opportunity.”

Humberto Borba

Awarded January 2016 (for the period November-December 2015)

Humberto Borba from Brazil was previously recognised by submitting 46 commits to our kernel and device projects. This time, Humberto submitted 61 commits, earning him the title and an Xperia device. “I am very happy to get recognised once again,” Humberto said about getting the top spot. “The title is just driving me to spend more time on Sony projects, and it gives me more respect as developer on Open Sources projects.”

David Viteri

Awarded 1st November 2015 (for the period September–Oct 2015)

When David Viteri earned top honours as the March-April Hero Open Source Developer, he contributed 79 accepted commits to our kernel and device projects. This time, David contributed 121 accepted commits to our Xperia Z1 and Xperia Z3 AOSP projects. David says he’s very pleased once again to win this special recognition from Sony, and he is very excited with the progress of the Lollipop project and looks forward to making similar contributions to Marshmallow’s progress.

Erik Castricum

Awarded 1st September 2015 (for the period July–August 2015)

Erik is a 43-year-old second-line service desk supervisor at KPN, one of the largest telecom providers in the Netherlands. He is married and has two young kids, aged 2 and 3. Erik describes himself as always busy. When not working or spending time with his family, there is always time for open source Android development. Erik says that being selected as the Hero Open Source Developer motivates him to keep on contributing.

Humberto Borba

Awarded 1st July 2015 (for the period May–June 2015)

Humberto is 39-year-old developer and lives in Brasilia, Brazil. He’s a senior analyst for a technology company and has an educational background in Computer Information Systems. He’s also a member of Android development teams including CyanogenMod and OmniROM. His hobbies include fitness (walking and swimming), cooking for his family, music (he is a drummer), and Android development. Humberto’s main challenge is splitting his time between all his activities. Humberto says, “When I’m not spending time with my wife and three pretty daughters, I’m always looking for opportunities to work on Android projects!”

David Viteri

Awarded 1st May 2015 (for the period March–April 2015)

David is 23 years old and lives in Milan, Italy. He is originally from Ecuador and is a student working towards a degree in Web Design. He has been developing custom ROMs for several years, but started developing for AOSP when he received a Sony Xperia Z1. David loves working on the Sony AOSP project and loves all things Open Source in the Android world. He hopes to continue developing here and eventually get AOSP fully working, and credits Sony and FreeXperia team with helping to make good progress on Xperia AOSP project devices (yukon, rhine and shinano targets).

Marin Spajić

Awarded 1st May 2015 (for the period March–April 2015)

Marin is a 16-year-old high-school student, and his interest in phone modding started with a few Java-based Sony Ericsson phones, where he was mostly having fun with theming apps and UI. Marin’s awareness of Android began in 2008 with Google’s first Android phone, the G1. Two years later, he began developing with a Google OEM device, where he learned Android basics, structure, and source-building. Last year, he came back to Sony, primarily for the AOSP project and its good developer communication. Marin says, “I feel honoured to be recognised and thank Sony for providing this opportunity to support open source initiatives.”

Abhinav Jhanwar

Awarded 1st March 2015 (for the period January–February 2015)

Abhinav is a 17 year old student living in Raipur, India. His interest for Android development began at the age of 15 and he’s a fast learner who’s interested in custom aftermarket Android firmware. Abhinav likes to help other developers with their device trees, kernel sources and pretty much anything where he can share his knowledge. Abhinav’s interest in open source development was awakened when he got his first Android mobile, an Xperia Mini Pro. His interest grew and soon he developed his first custom ROM for Xperia P. Now he is a frequent contributor to our Open Device projects, working among other things with kernel cleanup, and Xperia T2 Ultra.