ApacheCon EU 2014

A popular misconception in some circles is that Apache values policy so much that it effectively damages a project's opportunity to grow. Reality is, whenever the Apache policy gets in the way of a project something is wrong. But the current policy and practices were conceived as tools to help projects rather than damaging them. The incubation (and, later, the presence) of OpenOffice at Apache brought the need to rethink several policy issues and set precedents for new ones. In most cases, we found the solution by going back to the rationale for a policy and implementing it in the right way for our case. We'll see several examples of cases where policy was reinterpreted in order to help the project and not to obstacle it.

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) excels at many things - fostering strong open source communities, creating excellent software, providing infrastructure to do the work, and providing a framework to verify the software before it's released.

But many projects want more from a foundation. In particular, they want to ensure that the world knows about the good work that they're doing, and the contributors want a foundation to provide resources to help take on tasks that developers typically do not enjoy or do well.

In this talk, Brockmeier will make the case for marketing FOSS projects in general, and specifically why Apache needs to evolve to help not only create software for the public good, but promote its projects as well.

Ever notice that the projects most likely to tell you to RTFM tend to have the worst FM? That's because the virtues of a docs team - Dilligence, Patience, and Humility - happen to be the virtues of kinder politer people, too.

Come learn some tips of writing better documentation, providing better end-user support, and just possibly growing your project community.

Rich has been doing Open Source documentation for 20 years, and some folks say he's kind of good at it.

As part of the Apache CloudStack project, I had a chance to see first-hand some of the good and bad choices made during Apache CloudStack's incubation. We'll take a look at a successful graduate more than a year after its exit from the Incubator, and where things went well and where they didn't go so well. Also will have plenty of advice for companies/projects looking to join the ASF.