Ask Me about FREE Apache Contributor buttons!

Back once again at ApacheCon, I’ll be giving out free Apache “Contributor” feather buttons. All you have to do to get your button is let me know that you’ve donated funds to the Apache Software Foundation. Any amount qualifies for your free button!

If you’re interested in sponsoring the ASF at a higher level, we’d love that too, and I might have a bunch of buttons for you!

You may also see a number of people at ApacheCon featuring giant “Ask Me!” buttons with the Apache feather on them. Please – follow directions, and ask us your questions! A number of knowledgeable members are wearing these buttons, and will be happy to answer your questions about what the larger ASF is all about, and why the organization behind all of our great projects is also important to support.

For those who can’t make it to ApacheCon, please feel free to contact me offline or on the mailing list for your button.

Reminder: Apache and the feather logo are trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation, along with the names of our many projects – and should be used with respect both for the ASF as a whole and for the many committers in our project communities.

Signup for FREE events at ApacheCon next week!

ApacheCon NA offers a whole host of options next week in Atlanta, GA. There are a wide variety of trainings being taught by some of the key committers on Apache projects (look for the combination discount code!) on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday thru Friday we have 5 tracks of great sessions, covering everything from business case studies to detailed technical talks.

We also offer some free events – these are open to the public, even if you can’t attend ApacheCon sessions or trainings. We do ask that you sign up in advance if possible, so organizers know how large a crowd to expect.

  • BarCamp Apache is free and runs during the day on Monday and Tuesday. Sign up, show up, and lead your own session with other BarCamp attendees!
  • Apache Meetups are hosted Monday through Thursday nights, starting at 8pm. We have meetups covering Apache projects like Hadoop, Lucene & Solr, Cassandra, Tomcat, Subversion, Deltacloud, Felix & OSGi, and of course the HTTP server. Meetups are free to attend by all.

If you are interested in any of the paid sessions or free events at ApacheCon, then you can show your interest by signing up on these popular social networks:

Follow @ApacheCon to learn more!

OpenJDK += Oracle, IBM

The big news this week is the sudden move by IBM to join with Oracle in collaborating on the OpenJDK. You can read the formal joint press release, or browse some of the first set of thoughtful commentaries here:

Required reading: everyone should re-read the ASF’s open letter to Sun Microsystems about the JCP. If you don’t remember why that letter is important, then go back through the Graphical Overview of Sun’s JSPA violations. If you like using the word “open” anywhere near the word “Java”, then you need to remember that they don’t really go together these days.

Apache new(s): officers, projects, commits

A brief roundup of recent Apache news:

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.

July Apache news roundup: Greg! Adobe+Day! FOP! FOP?

A brief listing of some of the news around the ASF this past month.

Oh, and the ASF elected a new board of directors as well – there are some different (and one new) faces, but overall, we expect steady sailing into better waters.

Want to get your own news about Apache projects? Read or feed from the announce list, official Foundation and project blogs, or get the Planet Apache community perspective.

Apache is at at OSCON!

For those of you lucky enough to be attending OSCON this week in Portland, there will be a number of well-know Apache folk there, as well as some talks about Apache projects. Plus, the ASF has an official exhibitor’s booth, #812 at the expo.

Sadly, I won’t be attending, but I did pick out a handful of cool Apache-related OSCON sessions you should check out. Be sure to stop by the ASF booth and say hi to Sally, Justin, and all the Apache volunteers who will be there to answer your open source questions, Apache Way style.

While OSCON is about everything open source, Apache both as a Foundation and a community of projects is about a specific kind of open source. The power of “Community Over Code” which epitomizes much of The Apache Way that Apache projects follow is brought to light by a great blog posting by Noah Slater of his CouchDB Retrospective. Thanks Noah for a great essay on your journey to a true community led project!

Have fun at OSCON – wish I were there!

Congratulations to the new Apache Board

The Apache Software Foundation held it’s Annual Member’s Meeting this week and cast votes to elect a new board of directors as we do each year. We also elected a number of new potential members, who may be receiving their private invitations shortly.

The new 2010-2011 Board of Directors comprises:

  • Shane Curcuru
  • Doug Cutting
  • Bertrand Delacretaz
  • Roy T. Fielding
  • Jim Jagielski
  • Sam Ruby
  • Noirin Shirley
  • Greg Stein
  • Henri Yandell

We welcome Noirin Shirley, who will be a new face on the board this year. We also welcome back Henri, Sam, and Bertrand who have served on the board in the past; the remaining directors are incumbents.

A big round of thanks went out during our meeting (on irc) for all of the non-returning directors Brett, Geir, Brian, and especially for Justin Erenkrantz who has also been serving as the Foundation’s President as well as a director.

See also the official ASF Foundation blog posting with the announcement.

A graphical history of the directors of the ASF is also available.

Likely Fraud Alert: “apache-project dot org”

Several people have contacted the ASF recently asking about an “Apache Indonesia Project”, something to do with “Digitization of Indonesian Population”, and/or something to do with an Apache 4.3 database server. The reports reference the domain name “apache-project dot org” (which I won’t link directly to here).

PLEASE NOTE: all of these projects or organizations have nothing to do with either the Apache Software Foundation, nor anything to do with any Apache projects. Their use of the “Apache” name is certainly not approved, and it is likely a violation of the ASF’s trademarks. Any references to an “Apache 4.3 – anything” are either bogus or a direct violation of our trademarks, since the ASF ships no such product.

Unfortunately, we’ve had a couple of recent reports of people sending them cash to get some sort of training DVD for an outsourcing project, and then wondering why they never hear back from the organization. Sadly, it seems that some scammer has decided to try to make some fast cash using the Apache name.

Remember: software from the ASF is always free to use following the conditions in our license, and the ASF will never ask for money for the software products that any of our projects create, nor to participate in any of our mailing lists. The ASF certainly appreciates anyone who voluntarily chooses to Sponsor the ASF, but material donations are never expected nor solicited in exchange for any Apache software.

If you’re ever in doubt about the source of information, remember: if it’s not hosted at apache.org, it’s probably not officially from the ASF. Much like here at Community Over Code: posts here are Shane’s own thoughts, and do not reflect the official position of the ASF. In this case, however, I’m confident that many other ASF members are equally upset about this seeming mis-use of our good name.

apache.numprojects -= 1; apache.karaf.intro = “Welcome!”

For only the fourth time in our history at last month’s June board meeting we passed resolutions that effectively reduced the total number of Apache projects by one.

  • As was widely expected, the board terminated the Apache iBATIS project, and sent it to the Apache Attic. This recognizes that we don’t expect there to be an active Apache iBATIS community, and that we don’t expect there to be any new development in that project for a while. The Apache Attic will continue to provide all the project’s resources on a read-only basis for any existing users. (Note: current users may also be interested in the external fork over at mybatis.org)
  • The board also terminated the little-known Apache Quetzalcoatl project and moved it to the Attic. “Quetz” had been charged with developing the mod_python module, but it never really took off as an organized Apache project. Current users may be interested in finding the sources over at modpython.org
  • In happier news, the board voted to promote an Apache Felix subproject named Karaf to top-level status. Apache Karaf is a small OSGi based runtime which provides a lightweight container onto which various components and applications can be deployed. The Felix PMC had seen that there was sufficient community around just the Karaf subproject that it deserved to have it’s own project.

So that’s two projects down, but one project up for the month of June.

iBATIS and Quetz both join previously retired projects in the Attic, HiveMind, Shale, AxKit, Xang, Beehive, and Jakarta Taglibs. Each are projects that had lost an effective Apache community able to actively develop them.

In the past, the ASF has also terminated a handful of other projects before the Attic was opened in 2008; those include Apache Commons (the first version) and Apache Avalon, both terminated for community issues. The ASF also once had an Apache PHP project that was terminated; in that case it was a happy and mutual separation of the PHP Group from the ASF.

Resolutions for creating and terminating Apache projects are passed by the board, typically at monthly meetings, and our public records of formal board actions are always available.

Stay tuned for news of the upcoming Annual Member’s Meeting of the ASF being held in mid-July, where we’ll also be electing a new board of directors.

mybatis.org forks from Apache iBATIS

The bulk of the active development community for the Apache iBATIS project has decided to fork the code, and move their development efforts to the new project they’ve founded called mybatis. While this may be old news to iBATIS/mybatis users, I thought it deserved a wider mention, both about the fork and some of the thoughts behind it.

What is mybatis?

mybatis.org is a new, independent project run by Clinton Begin and most of the PMC members and active committers of the Apache iBATIS project. It’s a fork of all the iBATIS code under a new name. They’ve recently released mybatis 3.0.1 GA, which will be the primary focus of development for the new mybatis team. They currently ship mybatis releases using the Apache License.

Since it’s a fork of the existing iBATIS code, it provides the same advanced SQL data mapping functionality that existing users expect. “MyBatis couples objects with stored procedures or SQL statements using a XML descriptor. Simplicity is the biggest advantage of the MyBatis data mapper over object relational mapping tools.”

Who is mybatis?

Clinton Begin, the original creator of iBATIS in 2001, is leading the project. Along with him are the bulk of the active developers of both mybatis (for Java) and mybatis.net. They are using Google Code to host the projects, along with source code, mailing lists and bug trackers. The project is independent, and is not directly associated with the ASF.

What will happen to Apache iBATIS?

The ASF is a public charity with the mission of provide software for the public good. Thus, we will continue to provide the complete source code under the Apache license in the future. In terms of the project as a whole, it’s expected that due to lack of community still participating at the ASF, it will be moved to the Apache Attic during the upcoming mid-June board meeting. That will mean the PMC and officer positions associated with Apache iBATIS will be dissolved, and some time thereafter, the website, mailing lists, and code for the project will be moved to the Attic for future read only reference.

Projects are moved to the Attic when there isn’t a sufficiently active and healthy community (primarily at the PMC level) to provide oversight to the project and it’s releases. The decision to move projects to the Attic is not a technical one – it’s purely a community issue. A project’s code and past history are always freely available to users, although in a read-only state. If, in the future, a sufficiently diverse community wishes to re-activate the project and follow the Apache Way, we welcome that.

What’s the difference? Why did mybatis want to fork?

Obviously, you’ll need to ask the mybatis team for the answer to this question. From emails I’ve exchanged with Clinton, and seen from other members of the mybatis team, my impression is that the difference wasn’t specifically technical, more organizational. They simply have a different vision for how to develop open source software projects than the ASF does.

ASF projects are expected to follow a number of procedures roughly known as “The Apache Way”. We believe that software projects with a diverse community; that use a consensus process to make decisions; and that do all their work in the open results in the best overall quality and longest lasting projects. While the ASF expects it’s projects to follow the Apache Way, we certainly understand that not everyone believes that our way of software development is the right one for everyone or for all projects.

While there were some unfortunate miscommunications (not necessarily anyone in particular’s fault) in the process of the fork, I hope there is no ill-will between the ASF and the mybatis team. While it’s sad that the ASF is losing a project (and the community with it), we wish the mybatis project luck in their work.

Is it OK for them to fork the project?

Of course! The Apache License is written to provide the maximum freedom to the users of our software. This means you are free to re-use any of the code we produce in almost any way you wish, including building atop it to create a proprietary product, or by forking the code and re-architecting the whole thing. While we always appreciate developers who choose to contribute fixes and new code back to our projects, we’re perfectly happy for people to take our code and do their own thing with it, either privately, or shared with the world.

So, good luck to mybatis, and mark this as (I think) the first time the ASF has had a coherent community choose to fork themselves and move elsewhere in a productive manner!