Hello, dear readers! It’s that time of the year again, when we reflect on what we have done and what we have learned in the past 12 months. 2023 was full of challenges, surprises, and achievements for me. Let me share some of the highlights with you.

My Academic Year

This year, I completed my second and last semester of my master’s degree in computer science. I learned a lot about advanced topics such as Internet of Things (IoT), Programming Paradigms or Project Management. Writing a 30 page project paper and a seminar paper of the same length prepared me for my largest achievement this year: my master’s thesis.

After countless hours researching, trying tools and processes and of course writing, I turned in my thesis titled “Ensuring Continuous Open Source Compliance and Security in agile Software Development”. With a little over 100 pages, this surely is my largest and most interesting work, as I am passionate about open source and its benefits in software development. I explored how to integrate and scale compliance and security checks in CI/CD environments using Tools like FOSSology, ScanCode and FOSSA.

All hard work proofed to be worth it when I graduated top of my class (with a converted GPA of 4.0) 🎓. I am very proud of this achievement and grateful for everyone that supported me along the way.

The Next Chapter: How I started my career

After finishing my master’s thesis, I started working full time as a software engineer. My main resposibility is to establish an open source compliance program to ensure all delivered software complies with the respective open source licenses. This is a very exciting role for me, as I get to apply all my knowledge and skills from my master’s thesis to real-world problems.

This September I had the opportunity to attend Bitkom Forum Open Source, where I learned more about the latest trends and best practices in open source compliance and security. I also had the chance to network with other experts and enthusiasts in this field. , and to share my insights and experiences from my master’s thesis. It was a very enriching and enjoyable event for me.

What else happened?

As regular readers know, this year I learned the importance of good backups the hard way: my server crashed and I lost all older blog posts 😭. Lesson learned: backup your data regularly and to a second location!

Since my old hosting provider handled this incident very poorly I switched to another hosting provider that hopefully offers better reliability. Now all data is automatically backed up to my personal TrueNAS server that lives in my basement - I am in full control of my data.

Additionally, I started preparing a Lecture about web engineering, which will start in January. I’ll be teaching first semester students about the basics of web development and web application architecture. I’m looking forward to sharing my passion and knowledge with those students. In the spirit of open source, all material is publicly available on GitHub.

Speaking of open source: as of today, I only made 435 contributions on GitHub this year, compared to 833 in 2022. My goal for 2024 is to make at least 500 contributions, which should be easy since I don’t have a master’s thesis to write 🤓.

That’s it for now. 2023 has been a year of growth, both academically and professionally. I am grateful for the opportunities and support that I have received along the way. I am excited to see what the future holds. Thank you for reading my blog and following my journey. I wish you all a happy and successful 2024. Happy New Year! 🎉