From Curiosity to Contribution: My Journey with OWASP BLT and the Road to GSoC 2026

My journey into open source didn’t start with a perfectly planned goal or roadmap. Like many developers, I had been using open-source tools for years without really thinking about what it meant to contribute to them. At some point, though, I became curious about how these projects actually worked behind the scenes and how people became part of them. That curiosity eventually led me to explore Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and the organizations that participate in it. While going through different projects, I came across OWASP , an organization I was already somewhat familiar with because of its work around web security. Among its projects, BLT (Bug Logging Tool) stood out to me. Interestingly, this wasn’t the first time I had looked at BLT. I had applied to GSoC 2025 with OWASP BLT as well. I wasn’t selected that year, but the process introduced me to the project and the community around it. Instead of treating it as a one-time attempt, I decided to stay around and keep contributing whe