Project Perspectives: Apache Weex (incubating) and The Apache Way

Challenge

"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
–Winston Churchill

Community

As a project under the ASF, Weex should and would do things under The Apache Way. But as one might imagine, there are a few problems Weex has to solve:

Engineering and Product

Weex Way

Community

Mailing List

"If it didn't happen on (a mailing) list, it didn't happen."

Decision Making

Developers' Feedback

Future Growth

There are many end users that choose Weex in their commercial product, among which include Taobao Mobile, with hundreds of millions of users. For a list of known companies using Apache Weex, please see https://weex.apache.org/community/who-is-using-weex.html .

Posted at 11:44PM May 20, 2019 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Success At Apache: Positively impacting the world one contribution at a time

Posted at 04:36AM Apr 01, 2019 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Success at Apache: What You Need to Know

EDITOR'S NOTE: I came across the author's original post, "An Introduction to Apache Software — What you need to know", dated 3 February 2017, and was interested in finding away to share with the greater Apache community. The author's enthusiasm was palpable, and earnestly intended to help educate others. With the ASF celebrating its 20th Anniversary this year, it's easy for many of us to simply rely on tribal knowledge, not realizing that navigation to definitive guides aren't intuitive to newcomers. Those of us who have been here for a while "just know", partially because we were creating it as we went along. Below is an updated version of the original post, amended through the guidance of three long-standing ASF Members. And that's the point of it all at the end of the day: at Apache, we help each other as it contributes to our collective success, and this writeup will help others find their Success at Apache. 

by Maximilian Michels

Before you started reading this post, you have already been using Apache software. The Apache web server (Apache HTTP Server) serves about every second web page on the WWW, including this website. One could say, Apache software runs the WWW. But it doesnt stop there. Apache is more than a web server. Apache software also runs on mobile devices. Apache software is part of enterprise and banking software. Apache software is literally everywhere in today's software world.

Apache has become a powerful brand and a philosophy of software development which remains unmatched in the world of open-source. Although the Apache® trademark is a known term even among the less tech-savvy people, many people struggle to define what Apache software really is about, and what role it plays for today's software development and businesses.

In the last years I've learned a lot about Apache through my work on Apache Flink and Apache Beam with dataArtisans, as a freelancer/consultant, and as a volunteer. In this post I want to give an overview of the Apache Software Foundation and its history. Moreover, I want to show how the "Apache way" of software development has shaped the open-source software development as it is today.

The History of the Foundation

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) was founded in 1999 by a group of open-source enthusiasts who saw the need to create a legal entity to institutionalize their work. Among the first projects was the famous web server called Apache HTTP, which is also simply referred to as "Apache web server". At that time, the Apache web server was already quite mature. In fact, not only did the Apache web server give the foundation its name but it became the role model for the "Apache way" of open and collaborative software development. To see how that took place, we have to go back a bit further in time.

A Web Server goes a long way

As early as 1994, Rob McCool at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in Illinois created a simple web server which served pages using one of the early versions of today's HTTP protocol. Web servers were not ubiquitous like they are today. In these days, the Web was still in its early days and there was only one web browser developed at CERN where the WWW was invented only shortly before. Rob's web server was adopted quite fruitfully throughout the web due to its extensible nature. When its source code spread, web page administrators around the world developed extensions for the web server and helped to fix errors. When Rob left the NCSA in late 1994, he also left a void because there was nobody left to maintain the web server along with its extensions. Quickly it became apparent that the group of existing users and developers needed to join forces to be able to maintain NCSA HTTP.

At the beginning of 1995, the Apache Group was formed to coordinate the development of the NCSA HTTP web server. This led to the first release of the Apache web server in April 1995. During the same time, development at NCSA started picking off again and the two teams were in vivid exchange about future ideas to improve the web server. However, the Apache Group was able to develop its version of the web server much faster because of their structure which encouraged worldwide collaboration. At the end of the year, the Apache server had its architecture redone to be modular and it executed much faster.

One year later, at the beginning of 1996, the Apache web server already succeeded the popularity of the NCSA HTTP which had been the most popular web server on the Internet until then. Apache 1.0 finally was released on Dec 1, 1995. The web server continued to thrive and is still the most widely used web browser as of this writing.

The Rise of the Foundation

The team effort that led to the development and adoption of the Apache web server was a huge success. The Apache project kept receiving feedback and code changes (also called patches) from people all over the world. Could this be the development model for future software? More and more projects started to organize their groups similarly to the Apache group. As the number of project grew, financial interests arose and potential legal issues threatened the existence of the Apache group. Out of this need, the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) was incorporated as a US 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in June 1999. In the US, the 501(c)(3) is a legal entity specifically designed for non-profit charitable organizations. This is in contrast to other for-profit open-source software organizations or even US 501(c)(6) non-profit organizations which do not require to be charitable.

After the ASF was incorporated, new projects could easily leverage the foundation's services. Over the next year, every few months a new project entered the ASF. The first projects after Apache HTTP Server were Apache mod_perl (March 2000), Apache tcl (July 2000), and Apache Portable Runtime (December 2000). After a short break in 2001 which was used to come up with a programmatic approach to onboard new projects via an incubator, the ASF has seen very consistent growth of up to 12 projects (2012) each year.

The ASF became a framework for open-source software development which, in its entirety, remains unmatched by other forms of open-source software development. The secret of ASF's success is its unique approach to scaling its operations, in which the foundation does not try to exercise control over its projects. Instead, it focuses on providing volunteers with the infrastructure and a minimal set of rules to manage their projects. The projects itself remain almost autonomous.

Apache Governance - How does the foundation work?

There are about 200 independent projects running under the Apache umbrella. The question may arise, how does the foundation govern its projects? First of all, the ASF is an organization that is run almost entirely by volunteers. In the early days, many of the volunteers were developers which did not like to spend much time with administrative things (who does?), so the organization is structured in a way that requires little central control but favors autonomy of the projects which run under its umbrella.

Per-Project Entities

For every project (e.g. Apache HTTP, Apache Hadoop, Apache Commons, Apache Flink, Apache Beam, etc.), there are a Project Management Committee (PMC), Committers, Contributors, and Users.

Project Management Committee (PMC)

The PMC manages a project's community and decides over its development direction. Its most rudimentary and traditional role is to approve releases for a project. In that sense it has a similar function as the original Apache Group which led the development of Apache HTTP Server. When a new project graduates from the Incubator (covered later), the foundation's central instance, the Board, approves the initial PMC which is selected from the PPMC (Podling PMC) formed during incubation. Each PMC elects one PMC member as the PMC Chair which represents the project and writes quarterly reports to the ASF Board. The Chair needs to be approved by the Board.

Through a project's lifetime new PMC members can be elected by the existing PMC. Note that each new PMC member needs to be approved by the Board but this approval is merely formal and there are few instances that a new PMC member is not approved. PMC members do not need the formal permission of the foundation to elect new Committers. PMC members themselves are also Committers. Let's learn about Committers next.

Committers

Committers can modify the code base of the project but they can't make decisions regarding the governance of the project. They are trusted by the PMC to work in the interest of the project. When they contribute changes, they commit (thus, the name) these changes to the project. Committers don't only change code but they can also update documentation, write blog posts on the project's website, or give talks at conferences. Committers are selected from the users of the project; more about this process in the Meritocracy section.

Users and Contributors

Users are as important as the developers because they try out the project’s software, report bugs, and request new features. The term is a slightly confusing because, in the Apache world, most users tend to be developers themselves. They are users in the sense that they are using an Apache project for their own work; usually they are not actively developing the Apache software they are using. However, they may also provide patches to the Committers. Users who contribute to a project are called Contributors. Contributors may eventually become Committers.

In the image, the per-project entities are represented as circles. They exist for every project. Note that the user group circle is not depicted in full size because big projects tend to have much more Users than Committers and PMC members.

Foundation-Wide Entities

The ASF does not work without some central services. Here are the most important entities:

Apache Members

Apache members represent the heart of the foundation. They have been referred to as the "shareholders of the ASF" because they are deeply invested in the ASF (not in the financial sense). A prerequisite to becoming a member is to be active in at least one project. To become a member, you have to show interest in the foundation and try to promote its values. The ASF holds membership meetings which are usually held annually. At membership meetings new members can be proposed and subsequently elected. Elected members receive an invitation which they can choose to accept within 30 days. Becoming a member it not merely a recognition for supporting the ASF, but it also grants the right to elect the Board.

The Board of Directors (Board)

The Board takes care of the overall government of the foundation. In particular, it is concerned with legal and financial matters like brand and licensing issues, fundraising, and financial planning. The board is elected by the Apache members annually and is also composed of Apache members. The current board can be viewed here. Note that there is only one central Board for the entire foundation but Board members can be PMC members in different projects.

Officers of the corporation

The Officers of the corporation are the executive part of the administration. They execute the decisions of the board and take care of everyday business. Most of the officers are implicitly officers by being the PMC chair of a project. Additionally, there are dedicated officers for central work of the foundation, e.g. fundraising, marketing, accounting, data privacy, etc.

Infrastructure (INFRA)

The support and administration team (INFRA) is the team that runs the Apache infrastructure and provides tools and support for developers. INFRA is the only team at Apache which consists of contractors which are paid for their work. Their work includes running the apache.org web site and the mailing lists which are Apache’s main way of communication. Over time, various other tools and services were created to assist the projects. The main tools available which are used by almost all projects are:

• Web space for the project's websites.
• Mailing lists, for discussing the roadmap of the project, exchanging ideas, or reporting bugs (unwanted software behavior). Typically the mailing lists are divided into a developer and a user mailing list.
• Bug trackers, which help developers to keep track of new features or bugs.
• Version control, which helps developers to keep track of the code changes.
• Build servers, which help to integrate/test new code or changes to existing code.

The Incubator

Founded in 2002, the Incubator is a project at the ASF dedicated to forming (bootstrapping) new Apache projects. The process is the following: People (volunteers, enthusiasts, or company employees) make a proposal to the Incubator. The proposal contains the project name, the list of initial PPMC (Podling PMC) members, and the motivation and goals for the new project. Once the IPMC (Incubator PMC) has discussed the proposal, it holds a vote to decide if the project enters the incubation phase. In the incubation phase, projects carry "incubating" in their names, e.g. "Apache Flink (incubating)"; this is dropped only once they graduate. To graduate, a project has to show that it is mature enough. The Community Development project at the ASF has created a catalogue of criteria called the Maturity Model. It requires having an active community, quality of code, and being legally compliant. Formally, the project needs to prove it fulfils the criteria to the Incubator IPMC which is comprised of Apache members. All existing work donated in the course of entering the incubator and all future work inside the project has to be licensed to the ASF under the Apache License. This ensures that development remains in the open-source according to the Apache philosophy. More about incubation on the official website.

Meritocracy - How are decisions made?

The Apache Software Foundation uses the term "meritocracy" to describe how it governs itself. Going back to the ancient Greeks, meritocracy was a political system to put those into power which proved that they were motivated, put effort into their work, and were able to help a project. The core of this philosophy can be found throughout history from ancient China to medieval Europe and is still present in many of today’s cultures in the sense that effort, increased responsibility, and service to a part of society ought to pay off in terms of power of decision, social status, or money.

Meritocracy in the Apache Software Foundation denotes that people who either work in the interest of the foundation or a project get promoted. Users who submit patches may be offered Committer status. Comitters who are drive a project, may gain PMC status. PMC members active across projects and taking part in the foundation's work may earn the Member status.

Decision-making within the foundation and projects are typically performed using Consensus. Consensus can be "lazy" which implies that even a few people can drive a discussion and make decisions for the entire community as long as nobody objects. The discussions have to be held in public on the mailing list. For instance, if a Committer decides to introduce a new feature X, she may do so by proposing the feature on the mailing list. If nobody objects, she can go ahead and develop the feature. If lazy consensus does not work because an argument cannot be settled, a majority based vote can be started.

Meritocracy and "lazy" Consensus are the core principles for governance within the Apache Software Foundation. Meritocracy ensures that new people can join those already in power. "Lazy" Consensus creates the opportunity to split up decision-making among the group such that it doesn't always require the action of all members of the community.

The Apache License - A license for the world of open-source

With the incorporation of the foundation in 1999, a license had to be created to prevent conflicts with the intellectual property contributed by others to the ASF. Originally, the license was meant to be used exclusively by the ASF but it quickly became one of the most widely used software licenses for all kinds of open-source software development.

The Apache license is very permissive in the sense that source code modifications are not required to be open-sourced (made publicly available) even when the source code is distributed or sold to other entities. This is in contrast to “Copyleft” licenses like the GNU Public License (GPL) which, upon redistribution, requires public attribution and publication of changes made to the original source code. The Apache license was first derived from the BSD license which is similarly permissive. The reason for this was that the Apache HTTP Server was originally licensed under the BSD license.

The current version of the Apache License is 2.0, released in January 2004. The changes made since the initial release are only minor but they set the prerequisite for its prevalence. At first, the license was only available to Apache projects. Due to the success of the Apache model, people also wanted to use the license outside the foundation. This was made possible in version 2.0. Also, the new version made it possible to combine GPL code with Apache licensed code. In this case, the resulting product would have to be licensed under the GPL to be compatible with the GPL license. Another change for version 2.0 was to make inclusion of the license in non Apache licensed projects easier and require explicit patent grants for patent-relevant parts.

Apache Today

The ASF today is not the small group that it used to be back in 1999. At the time of this writing, the Apache Software Foundation hosts 51 podlings in the Incubator and 199 top-level committees (PMCs). This amounts to almost 300 projects (latest statistics). Note that, a PMC may decide to host multiple projects if necessary. For instance, the Apache Commons PMC has split up the different parts of the Apache Commons library into separate projects (e.g. CLI, Email, Daemon, etc.). 50 of the 300 projects have been retired and are now part of Apache Attic, the project which hosts all retired projects. The above graph is taken from https://projects.apache.org.

Apache Conferences

The Apache Software Foundation regularly organizes conferences around the world called ApacheCon. These conferences are dedicated to the Apache community or certain topics like Big Data or IoT. It is a place to meet community members and learn about the latest ideas and trends within the global Apache community. Apart from the official conferences, there are conferences on Apache software organized by companies or external organization, e.g. Strata, FlinkForward, Kafka Summit, Spark Summit.

Here's a list of some projects that I came across in the past. I grouped them into categories for a better overview. I realize you might not know a lot of the projects but maybe this list can be the starting point to discover more about these Apache projects :)

Big Data

• Hadoop
• Flink
• Spark
• Beam
• Samza
• Storm
• NiFi
• Kafka
• Flume
• Tez
• Zeppelin

Cloud

• Mesos
• CloudStack
• Libcloud

Machine Learning

• Mahout
• SAMOA

Office

• OpenOffice

Database

• CouchDB
• HBase
• Zookeeper
• Derby
• Cassandra

Query Tools / APIs

• Hive
• Pig
• Drill
• Crunch
• Ignite
• Solr
• Lucene

Programming Languages

• Groovy

Distributions

• Bigtop
• Ambari

Libraries

• Commons
• Avro
• Thrift
• ActiveMQ
• Parquet

Developer Tools

• Ant
• Maven
• Ivy
• Subversion

Web Servers

• HTTP (the one!)
• Tomcat

Web Frameworks

• Cocoon
• Struts
• Sling

Apache - A Successful Open-Source Development Model

My first attempt to learn more about Apache goes back several years. I was using the Apache License while working on Scalaris at Zuse Institute Berlin. I realized that the license was somehow connected to the Apache Software Foundation but I didn't really understand the depth of this relationship until I started working on Apache Flink with dataArtisans. Besides the official homepage of the foundation, relatively little information was available on the Internet about the foundation and its projects. In hindsight, the best source of information was to read the email archives, get to know other people at the ASF, and become a volunteer myself :)

When I originally wrote this post I couldn’t find an introductory guide to the ASF. So I decided to do a bit of research myself and tried to write down what I had learned working on Apache projects. I hope that I could provide an overview of the ASF and show you how significant the foundation has been for the open-source software development.

Thank you

Thank you for reading this article. Feel free to write me an email if I got something wrong or you would like to comment on anything.

Thank you Roman Shaposhnik, Shane Curcuru, Dave Fisher, and Sally Khudairi for your comments which were very helpful to revise this post for the 20th anniversary of the ASF.

Sources

• Web Server usage
• Apache Software Foundation
• Apache History
• About Apache
• Robert McCool
• CERN httpd
• Apache HTTP
• Initial press release
• Apache License
• Apache License Version 2.0
• How it works
• Apache Dev
• Apache Incubator
• Apache projects

 # # #

"Success at Apache" is a monthly blog series that focuses on the people and processes behind why the ASF "just works". https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/category/SuccessAtApache

Posted at 02:15AM Mar 26, 2019 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Project Perspectives: Apache RocketMQ and The Apache Way

Posted at 02:17AM Mar 20, 2019 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Apache Software Foundation Platinum Sponsor Profile: Leaseweb

Posted at 02:04PM Mar 18, 2019 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Success at Apache: Growing with the ASF

by Phil Steitz

I got involved at the ASF in 2002, back in the wild and wooly Apache Jakarta days. In my day job, I was responsible for the team introducing Java technology at a large financial services company.

One of the first things we built was an MVC (model-view-controller) framework for Web applications. We were very proud of it and it worked great in production, but it was hard for us to keep ahead of the feature requests from the many development teams who were using it. One evening, someone said, "Hey, there is this Struts thing that is very similar to what we do and it has some of these things already." I went home and found my way to the Jakarta Web site and downloaded the latest source release.

Posted at 09:19PM Mar 05, 2019 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Success at Apache: For Love or Money: Volunteer vs. Professional Open Source

Posted at 03:18PM Feb 05, 2019 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Apache Software Foundation Gold Sponsor Profile: Bloomberg

Posted at 02:25AM Jan 15, 2019 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Success at Apache: Accidentally Finding Awesome

Posted at 01:16PM Jan 07, 2019 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Success at Apache: Cookie Monster

by Isabel Drost-Fromm

As a researcher interested in machine learning, Web- and social graphs I joined the Nutch mailing lists back in 2005 when the project was still on SourceForge. I started tinkering with Nutch Writeables to store the data I needed for my analysis – something that today some may know as Hadoop Writeables – the Nutch wiki still has a link to the material that I could get published out of those experiments: https://wiki.apache.org/nutch/AcademicArticles

After leaving academia I remained on the Nutch and Lucene mailing lists - until one day I saw the idea of an "Apache Text" project mentioned: https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/ac22faddbef946b66d544e590fe1b2a54b60215c98cc38a2f995ee06@1176254016@%3Cdev.lucene.apache.org%3E ... I got in touch with Grant Ingersoll, over the course of half a year that vague idea was turned into a plan to have a scalable machine learning project at Apache: Scalable in terms of community, dataset size but also commercially friendly when it comes to licensing – Apache Mahout was created.

Some ideas turn into something with a life on its own. The story I'm going to tell has little to do with great technical or economic achievements that were made with software developed at The Apache Software Foundation. However it has a lot to do with the kind of cross community links that exist between projects at Apache. It also has a lot to do with the fact that there are people active in Apache projects for whom the project is more than merely a day job.

But let's start at the beginning: Little over a year ago, in April or May 2017 Stefan Rudnitzki, one of my then-new colleagues at Europace AG was showing me around the office – mentioning in particular that there's space for meetups of 100 up to 200 people. It was the year when it was unclear whether or not there would be an ApacheCon EU. The combination of those two pieces of information put  an interesting idea in our heads: Why not pull ASF interested people to Berlin and have them discuss cross-community, behind-the-scenes, OSS economics, decentralized project management, coordination of work without discretionary power topics?

In a first step we ran a rough version of the idea past a handful of friends at Apache – and received encouragement. The idea got bigger, new aspects were added and we thought "Let's get more specific!".

In a working backwards model the next thing that was written was a press release (in big, bold, red letters marked as "draft, imaginary, DO NOT PUBLISH!!!!!!!") describing a conference on all things open source behind the scenes. The format helped identify important open question marks – like: 

• "We don't have a name for the event yet!"
• "We need to decide on a date."
• "We need to come up with a clearer list of topics to cover."
• "What's our target audience?"
• "If this is a full day event – what will we do about catering?"
  
  

What helped me personally was having learnt from Sally in her ASF media training what a real press release actually should look like. 

As for the name that was found missing in the initial press release draft:  After weeks of trying several approaches to come up with a catchy name, I went to pick up my child from kindergarten. What caught my eye was a poster announcing a beneficial concert to collect donations for better equipment and toys – an *a capella* concert: .oO(FOSS A Capella?) .oO(FOSS Backstage?)

The press release formatted version of the vision was first run by Europace – though people here are fairly regularly running after hours meetups, hosting an entire full-day conference is a slightly different scale. After the idea had been met with approval here, it was run by the Apache Community Development mailing list – which we used to keep current planning status transparent and public. 

With the idea out in the open it grew beyond something that can easily be run as a small side project. Years ago to create Berlin Buzzwords I had been working together with an event agency called newthinking communications GmbH. They were founded in 2003 by Andreas Gebhard and Markus Beckedahl in the spirit to create a network on the interface between digital technologies and society. Today, the focus lies in the organisation of events such as Berlin Buzzwords and FOSS Backstage as well as content management services (based on Drupal) for NGOs and political parties as well the conferences named above. So I got in touch with newthinking – and was delighted to receive "Sure, we are going to help out" as an answer. 

So, what about the cookies? One of the first offers I received after publishing that we were to run a FOSS Backstage full day Micro Summit in November 2017 was: "If you need support with providing cookies for the coffee break – I'm happy  to bake some, if there's no more than 40 attendees." Half jokingly I responded that I would add another 40 cookies, lest someone sends me a 3D model of an ASF feather cookie cutter. Lo and behold – the next thing I know is that someone sends me a model file for an ASF cookie cutter (which by now even made it to the then VP trademarks – who was interested in putting it to good use himself). Just a few weeks later I attended Open Source Summit in Prague. Guess what happened? Someone who knew I'd be there brought some printed cookie cutters with him from Australia.

In the meantime we had a one day / two tracks FOSS Backstage Micro Summit in November 2017 kindly hosted by Europace AG. I was able to talk several people into baking ASF cookies (including sugar coatings in the appropriate colours). In addition with the support of both, Newthinking communications GmbH, the ASF planners, and the ASF community development PMC an Apache Roadshow was co-located with the actual FOSS Backstage in June this year – a two day, multiple tracks event featuring Danese Cooper and Shane Coughlan for keynotes, a host of speakers with all sorts of relevant and inspiring stories to share, as well as fishbowl discussions on topics like Open Source monetization. One of the loveliest feedback we received: "This doesn't feel like an inaugural conference, given the professional organisation. You surely did manage to successfully invite people from a great variety of FOSS projects and foundations."

Having a press release draft ready was helpful when starting to drum up interest for the real event: With all details filled in, the "Draft/ Do not share"-warning removed it ended up getting sent to the press and published for real.

We started with a scope of all things FOSS economics, decentralised organisation, cross-cultural team-building, volunteer motivation, licensing and legal. In 2019 we want to align these aspects towards InnerSource, work collaboration principles and modern work models so that teams, companies and organisations can learn from the experiences we all make while working on Open Source projects. We are glad to have the event backed by newthinking GmbH next year again.

"Success at Apache" is a monthly blog series that focuses on the processes behind why the ASF "just works" https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/category/SuccessAtApache

Posted at 11:41AM Dec 03, 2018 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Success at Apache: Wearing Small Hats

Posted at 09:21PM Nov 05, 2018 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Success at Apache: carrying forward the benefits

Posted at 09:27PM Oct 01, 2018 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Success at Apache — 赢在 Apache: If it helps others, all the better.

by Sally Khudairi, with contributions by Ignasi Barrera, Von Gosling, Luke Han, Kevin A. McGrail, and Anthony Shaw. Translations by Ted Liu and David Zhenwei Dong.

I became active in The Apache Software Foundation at its inception in 1999. I am responsible for elevating the ASF's visibility, and supporting the Foundation by counseling 350+ Apache projects and their communities in the areas of messaging, outreach, and engagement.

As a global, virtual, and diverse community, the ASF relies on countless Apache Members, Committers, and Contributors to help share our values and explain our processes with others. We have grown from a single project to hundreds of projects and communities https://projects.apache.org/committees.html?date through "The Apache Way": an inclusive process and judicious reinforcement of "Community Over Code". 

We launched the "Success at Apache" blog series following the Media & Analyst Training at ApacheCon Seville in 2016. I asked ASF Board Member and VP Brand Management Mark Thomas his opinion on what he thinks are some of the reasons that the ASF "just works". His immediate response was: "project independence". I asked if he'd put that in writing —in his own words— as our community members' personal experiences help others see The Apache Way through their unique perspectives. Shortly afterwards, we published "Project Independence" https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/success_at_apache_project_independence and "Success at Apache" was born https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/feed/entries/atom?cat=SuccessAtApache . 

Whilst English is the ASF's official language, localization often helps foster understanding,  encourage adoption, and onboard new contributors more quickly. A while back, ASF Member Ted Liu told me that he and some of his coworkers had translated a handful of our "Success at Apache" blog posts into Mandarin Chinese. He asked if it would be useful to us.

Why yes, of course: new approaches to promote and propagate The Apache Way are always appreciated.

. . . 

赢在 Apache

- Meritocracy, by Kevin A. McGrail, Vice President of ASF Fundraising. Translation by David Zhenwei Dong.

- Lowering Barriers to Open Innovation, by Luke Han, Vice President of Apache Kylin. Translation by David Zhenwei Dong.

- Scratch Your Own Itch, by Ignasi Barrera, a member of the Apache jclouds PMC. Translation by Ted Liu.

- Contributing to Open Source Even with a High-pressure Job, by Anthony Shaw, contributor to over 20 Open Source projects, including Apache Libcloud. Translation by Ted Liu.

- Open Innovation from a Non-native English Country, by Von Gosling, original co-founder of Apache RocketMQ. Translation by Ted Liu.

. . .

Ted's action reflects one of our greatest successes at Apache: the mindset of "If this is helpful to me, that's good (= "scratch your own itch"). If it helps others, all the better." 

After all, we didn't become the world's largest Open Source foundation by not being helpful. There's always something needing to be done in an all-volunteer community: if you'd like to help the ASF, we will happily accept your assistance where possible. Plus, helping others feels pretty great.

Whether contributing code and writing documentation http://apache.org/foundation/getinvolved.html , mentoring community members http://community.apache.org/ , supporting the ASF through an individual donation or corporate sponsorship http://apache.org/foundation/contributing.html , or serving in myriad other ways https://helpwanted.apache.org/ , we thank you.

For an immersive, rewarding experience with dozens of Apache projects and hundreds of user and developer community members, consider joining us at ApacheCon in Montreal 24-27 September 2018 http://apachecon.com/ . This year's event is extra special, as we're celebrating the 20th Anniversary of ApacheCon —huzzah! All are welcome https://blogs.apache.org/comdev/entry/my-first-experience-of-apachecon

We look forward to seeing you there and sharing your Success at Apache.

Sally Khudairi is Vice President of Marketing & Publicity at The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) where, in 2002, she was elected its first female and non-technical Member. Over her 25-year career in the Web, Khudairi has been lauded as a dynamic communications strategist and expert in next-generation innovations, and has played an integral role in building campaigns for some of the industry’s most prominent standards and organizations. Prior to launching the ASF in 1999, Khudairi was deputy to Sir Tim Berners-Lee as Head of Communications at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), overseeing the launch of 17 specifications that include PNG, CSS, HTML4 and XML. She is Managing Director/Luxury & Technology Practice lead at HALO Worldwide and Founder/Chief Marketing Officer at OptDyn.

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"Success at Apache" is a monthly blog series that focuses on the processes behind why the ASF "just works" https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/category/SuccessAtApache

Posted at 02:03AM Sep 05, 2018 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Success at Apache: the Apache Legal Shield - a pragmatic view

by Bertrand Delacretaz

I became active in the ASF in 2001 via Gianugo Rabellino -- he was the one who started the discussions with Apache Fop about me donating the jfor XLS-FO to RTF converter that I had developed earlier. It was already too late to uninvent RTF which is a terrible format, but I digress. I am currently a member of the Board of Directors of the ASF and have been doing a lot of thinking (and presentations) about what makes the ASF tick in terms of collaboration and Shared Neurons.

Section 12.1 of the Apache Bylaws https://www.apache.org/foundation/bylaws describes the legal protection that the Apache Software Foundation provides to our directors, officers and members.

I'm not a lawyer by far, however, and that language is a bit hard for me to parse, so I thought I'd try to clarify what this means for our contributors and learn more about it in the process.

If you go into detail there's certainly more to it but I think the items below are the absolute basics that every PMC member https://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html should understand in order to benefit from the legal shield that the Foundation provides.

What is a "Legal Shield" ?

An important goal of the Apache Bylaws and policies is to isolate our contributors from any legal action that might be taken against the Foundation, if they act as specified in those policies.

That's what we mean by "legal shield": a way for our individual volunters to be sheltered from legal suits directed at the Foundation's projects, as mentioned in our "How the ASF works" document https://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html .

Acts of the Foundation

The first thing is to make sure our software releases are "Acts of the Foundation" as opposed to something that people do in their own name. This is natural if we follow our release policy https://www.apache.org/legal/release-policy.html , which defines a simple release approval process for releasing source code that makes the project's PMC https://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html responsible for the release, as opposed to our individual contributors and release managers.

This means that if the released software is ever involved in legal action and someone has to testify or produce information as part of a subpoena, or worse, it's the Foundation which is in charge of that and not our individual contributors. These things happen from time to time, not very often but they can represent a lot of work and aggravation that none of us are looking for. The 2011 subpoena to Apache around Java and Android http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20110509221136468 is just one example of that. Produce documents reflecting all communications between someone and Apache, how fun is that?

The goal of our release process is to make it very clear what an Apache Release is, and also clarify that anyone using our software in other ways, by getting it directly from our code repositories for example, does so at their own risk. If it's not an Apache Release we didn't give it to them, they grabbed it on their own initiative and have to accept the consequences of that.

The Rest is for Contributors

This leads to a second and related item: developer builds, which happen much more often than releases, often daily, and that people can easily download and use.

Those builds are meant for contributors to our projects, to use in development and testing as part of their contribution activities.

To avoid any confusion, it is important to clearly label them as such, and to draw a clear line between them and official Apache Releases. They should only be advertised in places where developers who are part of our communities (as opposed to the general public) can see them, and with suitable disclaimers.

In our world of continuous deployment and automated builds, the lines between what's a release and what's just tagged code that works for someone are often blurred. That's totally fine from a technical point of view, and often desirable when one wants to move fast, but we shouldn't forget about the possible legal implications ot distributing software.

Let's make sure we take advantage of the well-designed Apache Legal Shield that the Foundation provides to us, by strictly following our release policy and clearly specifying what is what in terms of downloadable software.

I never thought I'd write a blog post on a legal topic, so here's the FUN DISCLAIMER: As mentioned, I am not a lawyer by far, and the above should not be considered legal advice - just a pragmatic view that can hopefully help our contributors better understand the related issues. For legal advice, consult your own legal advisor! And if you're thirsty after reading all this, get a drink and give a toast to the ASF and its founders!

Many thanks to the fellow Apache members who provided feedback and additional ideas for this post.

. . . 

Bertrand Delacretaz works as a Principal Scientist with the Adobe Research team in Basel, Switzerland. He spends a good portion of his time advocating and implementing Open Development as a way to make geographically dispersed teams more efficient and more fun for his coworkers. Bertrand is also an active Member of the Apache Software Foundation, currently on his tenth term on the Foundation's Board of Directors (Fiscal Year 2018-2019).

Posted at 12:21AM Aug 07, 2018 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Success at Apache: The Apache Way for Executives

by Alex Karasulu

I'm a long time member of the Apache Software Foundation and have been an executive officer of several corporations over the course of the past 20 years. I've co-founded several projects in the community and mentored several others.

The "Apache Way" has benefited several aspects of my life, however I never imagined it would help make me a better executive. Even non-technical executives, in organizations totally outside of the realm of technology, can benefit from the Zen of the Apache Way.

Life is hard when you're stupid

I was involved in a number of early dot com startups as an executive, however that was before my involvement with Apache and long before any exposure to the Apache Way. To this day, I remember how opportunistic decisions for short term gains, the lack of collaboration, openness and communication kept causing friction that made my job and ultimately my life much harder than it had to be.

Learning while on the job

Exposure to the philosophy began early even while lurking on mailing lists but picked up more while incubating the Apache Directory Project where I worked with others to grow an active community. Meanwhile, I was the Chief Technology Officer of a large financial services company called Alliance Capital Partners. It was 2002, and the first time I had to conduct myself as a C-Suite executive in an enterprise that was obviously not a technology company. Incidentally, the lack of hands-on coding got me working on a pet project that ultimately became the Apache Directory Server and Apache MINA. The project was medicine to keep me sane and technically up to date. Unbeknownst to me, this would save my career, not as a developer, but as an executive.

The Apache Way makes life easier

The most important and first lesson I learned from the Apache Community was to avoid short term gains that were unsustainable in the long term. This very important core principle derives in part from the concept of "community over code". It does not matter how much code you write, or how good your code is if you cannot get along, compromise, and communicate respectfully with your peers. The code does not write itself, its the community behind it that keeps the code alive. Involving only the most technically proficient contributors should never trump the need to build a sustainable community. I saw projects often suffer from self-centered yet skilled coders added as committers for short term gain at the detriment of a healthy sustainable community. So as a corollary to community over code, avoid short term gains that get in the way of the long term sustainability of an organization's culture. This has immense applications for any executive in both technical and non-technical fields.

While growing my new development organization in this financial services organization, I decided to avoid hiring people that seemed to be very skilled technically but lacked the desire or social skills to collaborate with others. Thanks to experiences at Apache, I could start telling them apart much better than I did before. Also, I was calmer and less anxious when hiring to fill gaps on the team. It was better not to have the resource than to introduce a bad apple onto the team. 

This was contrary to how I had operated earlier and started producing great results. The application of this basic principle lead to a solid team that worked better together than ever before in the past. They were able to leverage each others' skills thanks to collaboration to out perform any one skilled developer. This is all thanks to the concept of community over code where social skills, and collaboration were stressed more than technical skills. In the end, being kind, listening, and asking smart questions begets the kind of collaboration needed to build complex software. 

Not only did this help with developers, it also worked with teams that did not produce code like project managers under the CTO office. The rule is golden, and IMHO should be applied to any executive's decision making process regardless of the nature of the business or topic at hand.

Inner Source is the Apache Way

Executives drive the architecture and cultural direction of their organizations and the Apache Way provides a solid framework to create healthy foundations through open collaboration, communication and the availability of knowledge for everyone to participate.

Several very successful technology companies have adopted the Apache Way without really realizing they're doing so.  In 2000, Tim O'Reilly coined the term Inner Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_source to apply Open Source principles to any organization. Tim was essentially talking about applying the Apache Way within organizations. The Apache Way has proven itself with companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft, SAP, PayPal and even financial institutions like Capital One which have adopted the Inner Source methodology which is one and the same.

Without going into the details, of which we the Apache Community are intimately aware (using it daily within our projects), I would like to stress how important the approach is for executives outside of Apache to understand. The Apache Way can save organizations from all out disaster, not to mention billions of dollars by impacting the quality of services and products they produce. Again this does not only apply to companies in technological sectors. Capital One a financial services company has also used Open Source methods for internal projects to be extremely successful https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/using-open-source-methods-for-internal-software-projects .

Conclusions

The Apache Way provides several benefits to executives aware of the approach. Executives can directly integrate the principles of the Apache Way into their own thinking to improve their potential for personal success. However the biggest value comes from the cultural framework it produces for the entire organization, however to leverage it in their organizations, executives must be aware of it. The Apache Way has personally helped me grow as an effective executive and it can help others as well. It also provides a compass for how to properly build effective organizations, not only technical ones.

Alex Karasulu is an entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in the software industry and a recognized leader in the Open Source community. He is widely known as the original author of the Apache Directory Server, used by IBM both as the foundation of the Rational Directory Server and also integrated into the Websphere Application Server. Alex co-founded several Apache projects, including MINA, and Felix, among others, which, along with their communities, thrive independently past his day-to-day involvement in the projects. He is the founder of Safehaus, where he authored the first low-resource mobile OTP algorithms in Open Source with the OATH community that was later adopted by Google in their Authenticator product. In addition to IBM, Atlassian, Cisco, and Polycom are just a few of the many companies that sell commercial hardware and software solutions that bundle or embed software and products that Alex has created. Alex holds a BSc. in Computer Science and Physics from Columbia University. He is the founder and co-CEO of OptDyn.

Posted at 03:32PM Jul 09, 2018 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   |