A brief roundup of recent Apache news:

• Congratulations to Yonik Seeley, who made the one millionth commit to the main ASF code repository earlier today by adding a new feature to SOLR: SOLR-2128: full param substitution for function queries
• At the recent annual ASF Board Retreat, we appointed a new slate of executive officers, including a Vice Chairman – the first time in the ASF’s history that role has been filled. This is partly in recognition of the greater impact the ASF has in the world, beyond just the software we ship.
• ApacheCon is coming! There is still a chance to register for various events at a discount, and we have a great program planned – so we hope to see you in Atlanta this November!

Please welcome a number of new top level projects that have recently been created:

• Please welcome the Apache jUDDI project, a Java implementation of the UDDI v3 specification, which graduated in August from the Web Services project to be come a top level project.
• Welcome also the Apache Pig project, a platform for analyzing large data sets often used with Apache Hadoop – where it recently decided to move from being a subproject to a TLP in it’s own right.
• Likewise, the Apache Hive project has also split off from Apache Hadoop as well, providing a data warehouse providing a simple query language called Hive QL.
• The Apache Shiro project recently graduated from incubation to become a TLP, and provides a security framework for authentication, authorization, cryptography, and session management.

Finally, I’d like to extend the appropriate thanks and appreciation (which are very large!) to our recently outgoing executive officers:

• Justin Erenkrantz, our outgoing President, who’s literally traveled the world speaking at events and companies on the ASF’s behalf.
• Sander Striker, our outgoing Executive Vice President, who’s also been a help in outreach and our infrastructure in many areas.