Wireshark was initially developed by Gerald Combs. Ongoing development and maintenance of Wireshark is handled by the Wireshark core developers, a loose group of individuals who fix bugs and provide new functionality.
There have also been a large number of people who have contributed protocol dissectors and other improvements to Wireshark, and it is expected that this will continue. You can find a list of the people who have contributed code to Wireshark by checking the About dialog box of Wireshark, or have a look at the https://www.wireshark.org/about.html#authors page on the Wireshark web site.
The communication between the developers is usually done through the developer mailing list, which can be joined by anyone interested in the development activities. At the time this document was written, more than 500 persons were subscribed to this mailing list!
It is strongly recommended to join the developer mailing list, if you are going to do any Wireshark development. See Section 1.7.6, “Mailing Lists” about the different Wireshark mailing lists available.
Most of Wireshark is implemented in C99. A notable exception is the code in ui/qt, which is written in C++.
The typical task for a new Wireshark developer is to extend an existing dissector, or write a new dissector for a specific network protocol. Most dissectors are written in C99, so a good knowledge of C will be sufficient for Wireshark development in almost any case. Dissectors can also be written in Lua, which might be more suitable for your specific needs. As noted above, if you’re going to modify Wireshark’s user interface you will need a knowledge of C++.
Modifying the build system and support tooling might requires knowledge of CMake, Python, PowerShell, Bash, or Perl. Note that these are required to build Wireshark, but not to run it. If Wireshark is installed from a binary package, none of these helper tools are needed on the target system.
Wireshark is an open source software (OSS) project, and is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). You can freely use Wireshark on any number of computers you like, without worrying about license keys or fees or such. In addition, all source code is freely available under the GPL. Because of that, it is very easy for people to add new protocols to Wireshark, either as plugins, or built into the source, and they often do!
You are welcome to modify Wireshark to suit your own needs, and it would be appreciated if you contribute your improvements back to the Wireshark community.
You gain three benefits by contributing your improvements back to the community:
The Wireshark source code and binary packages for some platforms are all available on the download page of the Wireshark website: https://www.wireshark.org/download.html.