Yandex Expands Access for the Open Source Community

Yandex introduces Good First Issue, a dedicated hub designed to help newcomers contribute to open source. By collecting beginner-friendly issues from all relevant Yandex projects, the new page makes it easy for developers to discover their first task and quickly join the community.

Issues from Yandex repositories on GitHub now appear automatically and in real time on the new page. Instead of searching across multiple projects, contributors can find all starter tasks in one place. Yandex plans to expand the hub by adding issues from other platforms where Yandex open-source projects are hosted.

Good First Issue is designed for developers taking their first steps in open source. The tasks offer an easy introduction to each project's codebase and give newcomers the chance to contribute something valuable right away.

Sergey Berezhnoy,
Director of Developer Relations at Yandex

External contributors bring real value to our projects. To encourage more developers to get involved, we've made it easier to find the right task and take the first step. We know that starting out in open source can feel intimidating, and our goal is to lower that barrier.

Yandex has been sharing its technologies with the global developer community for many years. Its open-source projects range from small libraries to large-scale technology solutions, all chosen to benefit not only Yandex but also the wider community. 

In 2025 alone, Yandex released Yambda, one of the world's largest datasets for building recommendation systems, as well as the Pretrain and Instruct versions of its YandexGPT 5 Lite model, the continuous profiling system Perforator, and other major projects. Yandex also actively incorporates third-party open-source technologies in its own products.

Sergey Berezhnoy,
Director of Developer Relations at Yandex

Contributing to open source means contributing to progress. Without openness, collaboration, and community support, it's much harder  for the tech industry to grow. Good First Issue is our way of saying to developers: welcome — we're happy to work with anyone who wants to advance technology alongside us.

About Yandex

Yandex is a global technology company that builds intelligent products and services powered by machine learning. Its goal is to help consumers and businesses better navigate the online and offline world. Since 1997, Yandex has delivered world-class, locally relevant search and information services and developed market-leading on-demand transportation services, navigation products, and other mobile applications for millions of consumers worldwide.