Happy Birthday, Lettuce! 🥬✨
Two Years of Helping Us “Let You Get Started”
Two years ago today, a simple question echoed through the OWASP Slack channels — a question that continues to surface year after year:
“Where do I begin?”
For newcomers, the OWASP ecosystem is inspiring — but vast. With countless repositories, extensive documentation, and a diverse range of project pages, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed before writing a single line of code.
That moment of uncertainty sparked the creation of BLT-Lettuce. Today, we celebrate the project that transformed an intimidating wall of information into a welcoming front door.
The Origin: A Conversation and a Commit
Lettuce began not with elaborate architecture, but with a practical realization. Through conversations between Donnie Brown and Jason, a clear insight emerged: the best way to support newcomers was to meet them exactly where they already were — on Slack.
On February 29, 2024, the first prototype commit landed with a focused mission: create a guided pathway for the steady wave of students and curious developers joining initiatives like Google Summer of Code.
The name reflects that mission perfectly:
Lettuce → “Let us get started.”
6,000 Welcomes and Counting 🎉
Lettuce didn’t launch with fanfare or a marketing campaign. It was a quiet utility designed to do one thing exceptionally well: provide orientation.
Since its first organic Slack post in June 2024, Lettuce has supported nearly 6,000 newcomers in navigating OWASP with confidence.
It offered a structured, hierarchical guide through the ecosystem, enabling contributors to:
- Discover projects aligned with their interests
- Understand contribution pathways without decoding the entire organization
- Move from “lost” to “confident” in a single conversation
Importantly, Lettuce also takes into account each project’s Slack member count to suggest channels that are active, balanced, and welcoming. By guiding newcomers toward communities with healthy engagement — rather than overcrowded or inactive spaces — it helps ensure conversations are meaningful and contributors are seen.
What began as a simple onboarding tool quickly became a meaningful bridge into open source participation.
Growing Pains & The Road Ahead 🌱
Like any evolving project, Lettuce experienced its share of growing pains — server constraints, hosting transitions, and temporary migrations. Each challenge refined the vision and strengthened the foundation.
Now, as we celebrate this milestone, Lettuce returns to its roots as a standalone project — with an even broader ambition.
The core idea is simple yet powerful: onboarding should feel human. The same logic that helps newcomers navigate OWASP can support any large organization managing multiple repositories and welcoming a steady stream of new contributors.
Why Lettuce Matters ❤️
At its heart, Lettuce is not about automation — it’s about people.
Open source thrives when the first step feels accessible. Lettuce addresses the human side of contribution: first-day uncertainty, hesitation, and the fear of asking “basic” questions.
Whether you’re a GSoC applicant or a seasoned contributor exploring something new, your first interaction should feel clear, guided, and encouraging.
We want to make it easy.
We want to let you get started.
Happy Birthday, Lettuce! 🥳
Here’s to many more years of eliminating the “Where do I begin?” barrier — and building welcoming pathways into open source for everyone.