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Monday April 06, 2020

Success at Apache: Welcoming Communities Strengthens the Apache Way

by Jarek Potiuk


During my career, I have been a software engineer, Tech Lead Manager at Google, a robotics engineer at an AI and robotics startup, and am currently the Principal Software Engineer of a software house, Polidea, which I helped grow from 6 to 60 people within 6 years as CTO. Over the past year and a half I was a user, then contributor, then committer, and now a Project Management Committee (PMC) member of Apache Airflow.


Although I took on many roles through the years, including being the main organizer of the international tech conference (MCE), deep in my heart I was always a software engineer. It took me many years to find a place where I could explore my true potential. Then I became part of the Apache community. I first learned about the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) 20 years ago when I used the Apache HTTP server at the beginning of my career. I had only made small contributions to OSS projects up to that point, and becoming involved with Apache Airflow was the first time I contributed seriously to one. As a Principal Software Engineer at Polidea, several of our customers were using Apache Airflow and wanted to contribute back to the project to help other users. Better integrations of services with Airflow would significantly improve future releases of the software. 


The needs of our customers made me and my team go from users of the project to contributors and more. We have people in our software house who understand open source, know how to follow the OSS rules, and contribute changes from customers to help other people in the community. We know how to communicate well, we can also represent a vendor-neutral point of view because we represent the view of several customers and collaborate with all the stakeholders in the project. People in our company also contribute to other OSS projects, such as Apache Beam and Flink. 


We also discovered a great model where our customers wanted us to contribute to an open-source project to make it better because they were using it and wanted to improve it for future users. This allowed us to do it full time (or even 150% of the time if you add all the out-of-hours contributions). I invite you to read about it in my blog post The evolution of Open Source - standing on the shoulders of giants.


Committing to Apache 


I found exactly what I was looking for in the Apache Software Foundation. It’s a great organization for people like me: individual contributors who are also good at working with others, the ones who don’t shy away from organizing and making things happen, who thrive when they can do meaningful work with others. 


This made me think: since the ASF is so great, how come for 20 years I was not contributing to OSS projects more? And since so many software engineers use Apache technology, why is participation not more common? I got lucky because I was in a position that allowed and supported my contributions to an open-source project. For me, it’s a dream-come-true. But what about others? There must be more people willing to contribute and get involved in the OSS community, they probably just don’t know how to go about it yet or did not like the experience.


So here I am, sharing my thoughts on what can be done to help others to get to know ASF sooner and get involved.


Apache Airflow and the initial experience 


Apache Airflow is an exciting project. It is a platform created by the community to programmatically author, schedule and monitor workflows. It started in AirBnB in 2014, was submitted to the ASF incubator in March 2016 and it graduated to a top-level project in January 2019.


When I started working with the Apache Airflow project, I quickly realized that it was hard for me to contribute to. It was not clear how to develop and debug Airflow, how to start, and how to communicate. The project had a number of channels for communication including a developer list, a Slack channel, issues and pull requests alongside the code. As a newcomer, it was not easy to understand which channel is used for what and whether it’s OK to raise certain issues using those channels. It was not clear what were the common protocols: for example how to see that one thread is a discussion and one is voting on an already discussed topic. 


Is our community welcoming enough?

At a party after a conference where I spoke about Apache Airflow, I had a long discussion with a young engineer who was new to the field, Fabian. Fabian told me that often OSS projects create some invisible barriers around communication and onboarding. I explained to him the “Apache Way” and how transparency and openness help with those barriers, fiercely protecting the fact that “we are open”. We carried on with our friendly discussion and it was really eye-opening.

That conversation stayed with me for a while. After some time, I realized that maybe our project was not as welcoming and accessible as we thought: there should be an easier way for people to contribute and join the community. I recalled my case—when I joined the community, I made a mistake by writing that something “will happen” before discussing it with the community. A long-time community member reminded me that this is not the way we should communicate at Apache Airflow. Just to note - each project is autonomous within Apache and it defines its own communication rules. It was done in a very good and friendly tone and I took it as a lesson, but some people might be put off by such a response. Not everyone has the determination, experience, thick skin and willpower to overcome all the obstacles and some people might be put off by such responses - even if they are nice and friendly. 

Could we do better to communicate the ideals of our community more straightforwardly? Without coming across as harsh? Maybe we could find a way of explaining to the future contributors how they should communicate rather than do it by trial-and-error?


Becoming a more welcoming community

A few days and emails after the discussion with Fabian I started a thread at the developer’s list of Apache Airflow “[NON-TECHNICAL] [DISCUSS] Being an even more welcoming community?” that kicked off a conversation that included people who rarely had spoken before. As a result, we managed to introduce many changes to the processes for new members. Thanks to the input of people such as Karolina Rosół (Project Manager at Polidea), we came to the conclusion that the way seasoned community members communicate at Apache Airflow is not obvious at all to newcomers. We added missing chapters to our CONTRIBUTING documentation regarding communication channels, expected response times, and more. 

What helped a lot was that we were able to improve our documentation for the development process during last year’s Google Season of Docs program. Apache Airflow was one of the first projects at the ASF to participate in the program. I was one of the mentors to Elena Fedotova, a technical writer assigned to our project. She improved and restructured the documentation, and made it more readable and easier to understand. Many people took part in reviewing and correcting the docs. Also, we took on the task of creating a new website for Apache Airflow with modern, clean design, and well thought UX addressing different personas of visitors in mind (including new contributors, users and potential partners of Apache Airflow). One of my colleagues and fellow Apache Airflow committer, Kamil Breguła, put enormous effort into both building the website and also restructuring the documentation. 

As a result of the discussion at the developer’s list, we also introduced the mentorship options and even handled (via mentorship) a few difficult cases that could have lost us valuable contributions. A great example of the improvements we’ve done as a community might be this tweet from Vanessa, a research software engineer who had no experience with the community.  Vanessa had tried to contribute support for Singularity—a popular container technology for high-performance computing - a year earlier, and came back for a second try after much of this work was done:


https://twitter.com/vsoch/status/1231523084026253312


Are we there yet?


Looking back, it’s been a long (yet satisfying) journey trying to make the Apache Airflow community more welcoming. But how do we know it works?


At the beginning of this year, we started to participate in the Outreachy and Google Summer of Code programs, where people from around the world with different backgrounds can be paid for contributing to open source projects. Together with my friend and PMC member Kaxil Naik, we became program mentors and started to receive a flood of requests from the Outreachy members. Initially, we were overwhelmed but soon realized that we have everything we need to answer the questions of the candidates (and future committers) to let them teach their lessons and easily follow the “contributing” documentation. The contribution environment was available for them to get started, and the documentation detailed how they could learn how to prepare contributions and communicate via various channels.


Just two days later, we approved a few pull requests from those people! That’s quite a difference from 1.5 years ago when it took days, if not weeks, to understand the environment and how to work with Apache Airflow. It was truly a team effort; many community members participated in the process and made the Airflow project much more welcoming to newcomers.


Despite having challenges during our experience getting started, I was never going to quit. I loved the project and people almost from day one. Realizing how hard it was initially to start contributing (other people had told me so as well), I decided that I would put a lot of effort (both professionally and also personally) into making the project easier and more open and accessible for people with different backgrounds and experiences. My experience starting as a contributor, then becoming a committer, and now a PMC member proves that this is possible.


To me, Success At Apache means making the community and the spirit of Apache Way more accessible to people around the world. With the difficult times that we are going through now with COVID-19, it’s more important than ever to build and strengthen various communities. And to strengthen the community means to be open to others and be welcoming, We hope that our experience will encourage you to take a look at your project and see if you can make your community more welcoming.


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Jarek Potiuk started to work on the Apache Airflow project in September 2018. He became an Apache Airflow committer in April 2019 and a member of the Apache Airflow Project Management Committee (PMC) in October 2019. He is an Apache project mentor in Outreachy and Google Summer of Code and was a mentor in Google Season of Docs. Jarek is a Principal Software Engineer at Polidea and always keen on making it easier for people with different backgrounds to join OSS projects.


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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 09:46AM Apr 06, 2020 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Friday April 03, 2020

The Apache News Round-up: week ending 3 April 2020

Welcome, April! We've had a great week within the Apache community. Here's what happened:

Break out the cake, balloons, and streamers! The Apache® Software Foundation Celebrates 21 Years of Open Source Leadership – world’s largest Open Source foundation advances community-led innovation "The Apache Way" https://s.apache.org/21stAnniversary

Inside Infra: the new interview series with members of the ASF Infrastructure team.
 - Meet Chris Thistlethwaite https://s.apache.org/InsideInfra-Chris

ASF Board – management and oversight of the business affairs of the corporation in accordance with the Foundation's bylaws.
 - Announcing New ASF Board of Directors https://s.apache.org/Board2020 
 - Next Board Meeting: 15 April 2020. Board calendar and minutes https://apache.org/foundation/board/calendar.html

ApacheCon™ – the ASF's official global conference series, bringing Tomorrow's Technology Today since 1998.
 - Event status details posted at: Notice on Apache 2020 Conferences https://s.apache.org/zgm8m

ASF Infrastructure – our distributed team on three continents keeps the ASF's infrastructure running around the clock.
 - 7M+ weekly checks yield uptime at 99.99%. Performance checks across 50 different service components spread over more than 250 machines in data centers around the world. http://www.apache.org/uptime/

Apache Code Snapshot – this week, 917 Apache contributors changed 2,954,074 lines of code over 4,565 commits. Top 5 contributors, in order, are: Andrea Cosentino, Jean-Baptiste Onofré, Mark Thomas, Kaxil Naik, and Claus Ibsen.              

Apache Project Announcements – the latest updates by category.

Application Performance Management --
 - Apache SkyWalking Chart 2.0.0 released https://skywalking.apache.org/

Big Data --
 - Apache Druid 0.17.1 released https://druid.apache.org/

Blockchain --
 - Apache Tuweni (Incubating) 1.0.0 released https://tuweni.apache.org/

Libraries --
 - Apache Commons Lang 3.10 released https://commons.apache.org/
 - Apache Flagon UserALE.js 2.1.0 (Incubating) released https://flagon.incubator.apache.org/ 

Network Client/Server --
 - Apache Directory LDAP API 2.0.1 released https://directory.apache.org/

Servers --
 - Apache HTTP Server 2.4.43 released https://httpd.apache.org/
 - Apache Traffic Control 4.0.0 released https://trafficcontrol.apache.org/


Did You Know?

 -  Did you know that some of the top technology jobs today require experience with Apache Cassandra, Apache Cordova, Apache Flume, Apache Hadoop, Apache HBase, Apache Hive, Apache HTTP Server, Apache Kafka, Apache Mesos, Apache NiFi, Apache OpenNLP, Apache Spark, Apache Tomcat, Apache ZooKeeper, among many others? https://projects.apache.org/ 

 - Did you know that 11th grade students in Ontario, Canada, can practice their computer science skills with a special Learning At Home course that uses Apache NetBeans? http://netbeans.apache.org/ 

 - Did you know that the ASF is an official associated partner of the KNX Foundation for commercial/domestic building automation, IIoT, and Industry 4.0 standards? Apache Projects in IoT include Camel, Edgent (incubating), Ignite, IoTDB (incubating), Mynewt, PLC4X, Streampipes (incubating), and more? https://projects.apache.org/

Apache Community Notices:

 - The Apache Software Foundation Statement on the COVID-19 Coronavirus Outbreak https://s.apache.org/COVID-19  

 - Apache Month In Review: March 2020 – overview of events that have taken place within the Apache community https://s.apache.org/Mar2020

 - The Apache Software Foundation Operations Summary: Q3 FY2020 (November 2019 - January 2020) https://s.apache.org/r6s5u  

 - "Trillions and Trillions Served", the documentary on the ASF, is in post-production. Catch the teaser at https://s.apache.org/ASF-Trillions

 - Apache in 2019 - By The Digits https://s.apache.org/Apache2019Digits

 - The Apache Way to Sustainable Open Source Success https://s.apache.org/GhnI

 - ASF Operations Summary: Q2 FY2020 (August - October 2019) https://s.apache.org/2kv2n

 - ASF Founders look back on 20 Years of the ASF https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/our-founders-look-back-on

 - Foundation Reports and Statements http://www.apache.org/foundation/reports.html

 - ApacheCon: Tomorrow's Technology Today since 1998 http://s.apache.org/ApacheCon

 - "Success at Apache" focuses on the people and processes behind why the ASF "just works". https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/category/SuccessAtApache

 - Please follow/like/re-tweet the ASF on social media: @TheASF on Twitter (https://twitter.com/TheASF) and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-apache-software-foundation

 - Do friend and follow us on the Apache Community Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ApacheSoftwareFoundation/ and Twitter account https://twitter.com/ApacheCommunity

 - Find out how you can participate with Apache community/projects/activities --opportunities open with Apache Camel, Apache HTTP Server, and more! https://helpwanted.apache.org/

 - Are your software solutions Powered by Apache? Download & use our "Powered By" logos http://www.apache.org/foundation/press/kit/#poweredby

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For real-time updates, sign up for Apache-related news by sending mail to announce-subscribe@apache.org and follow @TheASF on Twitter. For a broader spectrum from the Apache community, https://twitter.com/PlanetApache provides an aggregate of Project activities as well as the personal blogs and tweets of select ASF Committers.

Posted at 06:05AM Apr 03, 2020 by Swapnil M Mane in Newsletter  |   | 

Thursday April 02, 2020

Announcing New ASF Board of Directors

At The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) Members' Meeting held this week, the following individuals were elected to the ASF Board of Directors:

  • Shane Curcuru (re-elected Director)
  • Bertrand Delacretaz (former Director)
  • Roy Fielding (former Director)
  • Niclas Hedhman (new Director)
  • Justin Mclean (new Director)
  • Craig Russell (re-elected Director)
  • Sam Ruby (former Director)
  • Patricia Shanahan (new Director)
  • Sander Striker (former Director)

The ASF thanks Danny Angus, Rich Bowen, Ted Dunning, Dave Fisher, Myrle Krantz, Daniel Ruggeri, and Roman Shaposhnik for their service, and welcomes our new and returning directors.

An overview of the ASF's governance, along with the complete list of ASF Board of Directors, Executive Officers, and Project/Committee Vice Presidents, can be found at http://apache.org/foundation/ 

For more information on the Foundation's operations and structure, see http://apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#structure 

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Posted at 06:08PM Apr 02, 2020 by Sally in General  |   | 

Wednesday April 01, 2020

Apache Month in Review: March 2020

Welcome to the third monthly overview of events from the Apache community. Here's a summary of what happened in March:

New this month --

 - Happy 21st Anniversary, ASF! https://s.apache.org/21stAnniversary 

 - ASF Statement on the COVID-19 Coronavirus Outbreak https://s.apache.org/COVID-19

 - Notice on Apache 2020 Conferences https://s.apache.org/zgm8m

 - Apache Software Foundation Operations Summary: Q3 2020 (November 2019 - January 2020) https://s.apache.org/r6s5u 

 - Success at Apache: Google Summer of Code Mentorship... by Sanyam Goel and Kevin A. McGrail https://s.apache.org/ejj5q

 - Beijing, China, joins Indore, India, to become the second Apache Local Community (ALC) Chapter https://s.apache.org/t4m3x 

 - "Inside Infra" --a new interview series with members of the ASF Infrastructure team. Meet Chris Thistlethwaite https://s.apache.org/InsideInfra-Chris

 - Apache Month in Review: February 2020 https://s.apache.org/Feb2020


Important Dates --

 - Next Board Meeting: 15 April 2020. Board calendar and minutes http://apache.org/foundation/board/calendar.html 

 - COVID-19-related adjustments to Apache Conferences: Roadshows DC and Chicago have been cancelled; the Seattle Roadshow has been postponed. The planners for ApacheCon North America have extended the CFP, and will provide regular status updates. https://www.apachecon.com/ 

Infrastructure --

Our seven-member Infrastructure team on three continents oversees our highly-reliable, distributed network under the leadership of VP Infrastructure David Nalley and Infrastructure Administrator Greg Stein. ASF Infrastructure supports 300+ Apache projects and their communities across ~200 individual machines, 1,400+ repositories, more than half a petabyte of software source releases, and 2-3M daily emails on 2,000+ lists. ASF Infra performs 7M+ weekly checks to ensure services are available around the clock. The average uptime in March was 99.87%.

Committer Activity --

In March, 785 Apache Committers changed 4,573,799 lines of code over 15,082 commits. The Committers with the top 5 highest contributions, in order, were: Andrea Cosentino, Jean-Baptiste Onofré, Mark Thomas, Claus Ibsen, and Kaxil Naik.

Project Releases and Updates --

New releases from Apache HTTP Server (Servers); Brooklyn (Cloud Computing); Calcite (Big Data); Commons (Libraries); CouchDB (Big Data); Curator (Messaging); CXF (Services Framework); Derby (Databases); Flagon (incubating; Logging); FreeMarker (Templating); Groovy (Programming Languages); HBase (Big Data); HttpComponents (Servers); Jackrabbit (Content); Kafka (Big Data); Log4j (Libraries); Lucene/Solr (Search); NiFi (Big Data); OFBiz (ERP); PLC4X (IoT); Qpid (Messaging); SkyWalking (Application Performance Management) Tomcat (Servers); Tuweni (incubating; Blockchain); Traffic Server (Servers).

The Apache Incubator is the primary entry path for projects and codebases wishing to become part of the efforts at The Apache Software Foundation. No new podlings have entered the Incubator over the past month, but we invite you to review the many projects currently in development in the Apache Incubator http://incubator.apache.org/ 

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To see our Weekly News Round-ups, visit https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/ and click on the calendar in the upper-right side (we publish every Friday) or hop directly to https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/category/Newsletter . For real-time updates, sign up for Apache-related news by sending mail to announce-subscribe@apache.org and follow @TheASF on Twitter. We appreciate your support!

Posted at 05:23PM Apr 01, 2020 by Sally in Newsletter  |   | 

Tuesday March 31, 2020

Inside Infra: Chris Thistlethwaite

"Inside Infra" is a new interview series with members of the ASF Infrastructure team. The series opens with an interview with Chris Thistlethwaite, who shares his experience with Sally Khudairi, ASF VP Marketing & Publicity.




"I get very attached to the technology that I'm working with and the communities that I'm working with, so if a server goes down or a site's acting wonky, I take that very personally. That reflects on how I do my job.”



Let’s start with you telling us your name --how is it pronounced?

It’s “Chris Thistle-wait” --I don’t correct people who say “thistle-th-wait”-- that’s also correct, but our branch of the family doesn’t pronounce the second “th”.

What’s your handle if people are trying to find you? I know you’re "christ" (pronounced "Chris T") on the internal ASF Slack channel.

Yeah --anything ASF-related is all under "christ".

Do people call you "Christ"?

They do! I first started in IT around Christmastime and was doing desktop support and office-type IT. When people started putting in tickets, and my username  was "christ" there, they were asking "why was Christ logging into my computer right now?" and it became a thing. When I was hired at the ASF I told Greg (Stein; ASF Infrastructure Administrator) about that story, he said "you gotta go with that for your Apache username."

When and how did you get involved with the ASF?


A long time ago I started getting into Linux and Open Source, and naturally progressed to httpd (Apache HTTP Server). Truth be told, that’s where it started and stopped, but I’ve always been interested in Open Source and working with projects and within communities. Three years ago I was looking for a new job and stumbled across the infra blog post for a job opening. I fired up an email, sent it off to VP infra and that’s how everything started. The ramp up of the job was diving deep into everything there is with the ASF and Open Source --which I am still diving. I don't think I found the bottom yet with the ASF.


How long have you been a member of the Infrastructure team?


This November will be my fourth year.


What are you responsible for in ASF Infrastructure?


Infrastructure has a whole bunch of different services that are used by both Apache projects as well as the Foundation itself: the Infrastructure team builds, monitors, supports, and keeps all those things running. Anything from Jenkins to mailing lists to Git, SVN repositories and on the back end of things we keep everything working for the Foundation itself within, say, SVN or mailing lists, keeping archives of those things, keeping your standard security and permissions set up and split out. Anyone you ask on the Infra team will say: "I do everything!" It's too hard to explain --it's quite possibly a little bit of everything that has anything to do with technology --as broad as it can possibly be.


So you really have to be a jack-of-all-trades. Do you have a specialty, or does everybody literally do everything?


Everyone on the team generally does everything --for the most part any one of us can jump into the role of anyone else on the team. Everyone has a deep knowledge of a particular or a handful of services that they’ll take care of --like, Gavin (McDonald; ASF Infrastructure team member) knows more about Jenkins and the buildbot and build services than most people on the team. At any one given point we’re on call and need to be able to fix something or take a look at something, so everyone needs to be versed enough in how to troubleshoot Jenkins. That can also be said for not just services that we offer, but also parts of technology, like MySQL or Postgres or our mail system or DNS: we do have actual physical hardware in some places, and we have VMs everywhere too, so sometimes we’re troubleshooting a bad backplane on a server or why a VM is acting the way it is. There's a very broad knowledge base that all of us have but there are specifics that some people know more about than others.


How does ASF Infrastructure differ from other organizations?


There are a lot of similarities but a ton of differences. A big part of how Infra is different is, to use a "Sally-ism": if you look at it on paper, it wouldn't work --I've heard you describe the ASF that way. If you explained the way things work at the Foundation to somebody, they would literally think that you're making it up and there's no way that it would possibly be working the way that it does. There's a lot of that with the Infrastructure team too: many people that I keep in contact with that I've worked with over the years, from my first job where we would buy servers, unbox them, rack them, wire them up, set them up, and run them from the office next door to us --I'd be impressed whenever I had 25 servers running in our little "data center" at that job, and now I talk to these guys about what we do at the ASF: we have 200 servers in 10+ different data centers that are vendor-agnostic and we make it all work. They ask: "how the heck do you do that?!" We just do --it's an interesting thing as to how it all works together because we solve problems that others have as well, but their problems are often centralized to one thing, or a data center that they control and own, or one cloud provider that they control and own, where they deal with a single vendor and possibly at most have to talk with the same vendor in two different geographical areas. We're having to deal with stuff with one cloud vendor that's a VM and other stuff on the other side of the world that's actual hardware in a co-location or data center running and the only thing that makes them the same is that they're on the Internet.


It's a good summation of the team too due to the fact that we’re all based out of worldwide locations, we’re not all in one spot doing something.


Describe your typical workday. Since you're all working on different things on such a huge scale, what's it like to be you?


"It's amazing" [laughs]. Everyone on the team generally has some project or projects that they are working on --long-running things for Infra. 


I'm currently working on rewriting a script for Apache ID creations. The process of putting your ICLA in, sending off to the Secretary, the Secretary says, "OK good," puts in all your data, and that gets put into a file in SVN ...currently, we have a script that we manually run that does a bunch of checks on the account and whatnot, and then creates it, sends off a welcome email, whatever. I'm rewriting that because it's an old script, it's in several different languages. It's actually six scripts that all run off of one script. Consolidating that into one, massive script, that's in a supported language for us, and then moving forward with it into something that we could potentially automate, versus me having to run a script manually a couple of times a day.


Fluxo (the ID/handle for Apache Infra team member Chris Lambertus) was working on some mail archive stuff in our mail servers. Gavin (Apache Infra team member Gavin McDonald) is working on some actual build stuff. Everyone has kind of "one-two punch" tasks that they work on during the day, and then the rest of the time is (Jira) tickets or staying on top of Slack, if people are asking questions in the Infra channel or in our team channel or something like that. The rest of it is bouncing around inside the ASF and checking things out, or finding out new projects to work on, or ways to improve such-and-such process. 


How many requests does Infra usually receive a day, in general?


Over the past three years, we've resolved an average of 6 Jira tickets a day, year-round. We've had 213 commits to puppet repositories in the last 30 days. We handle thousands of messages on our #asfinfra Slack channel, and have had 659 different email topics in the last year.


Dovetailing that, how do you keep your workload organized?


Everyone on the team does it their own personal way. I have a whiteboard and a Todoist list. We also have Jira to keep our actual tickets prioritized and running. We have a weekly team meeting/call and talk about things that are going on, and is the more social aspect of what we do week-to-week.


How do you get things done? You're juggling a lot of requests --what's the structure of the team? How do you prioritize when things are coming in? Is there a go-to person for certain things? If you're sharing everything, how do you balance it and who structures it? How does that work? 


To one end, the funnel to us starts with Greg and David (ASF Infrastructure Administrator Greg Stein and VP Infrastructure David Nalley). It's different from other places that I've worked, where I'm on a team of other systems administrator/engineering people, and we have a singular, customer-facing site. Someone says, "Hey, this should be blue instead of red," there's a ticket and we make the change and then it goes to the production.


There're many different ways to get a hold of the Infrastructure team. Everyone gets emails about Jira tickets and gets updated as soon as one of those comes in. If it's something that you know about --say, the Windows nodes that we handle-- those all fall into my wheelhouse because I'm the last one to work with Windows extensively. Everyone else knows how to work with them, but it makes more sense for me to pick it up in some cases. 


Most of the stuff in Jira are very "break-fix" kinds of things. A lot of the requests on Slack are too, for example: "DNS is busted," and we fix DNS. It's a very quick, conversational, "Let me go change that," or, "I'm going to go fix that real quick." Of course, some of the Jira tickets are very long-running, but the end result is they're fixing something that used to work. 


We were originally running git.apache.org, and Git WIP, so we hosted our own internal Git servers and we would read-only mirror those out to GitHub. Somewhere along the line, Humbedooh (the ID/handle for Apache Infrastructure team member Daniel Gruno) started writing out Gitbox or building Gitbox based on the need to have writable GitHub repositories. He built Gitbox and set up with the help of some other people on the team, got it going, and that became our replacement for git.apache.org. While we still host our own Git repositories, people are free to either write to ours or write to GitHub, and the changes are instantaneously mirrored between the two.


We had Git hosted at the ASF, and had GitHub as a read-only resource. The need arose to have rewrite on both sides: Humbedooh went and built out MATT (Merge All The Things), which does all of the sync between GitHub and our Git instance.


MATT started a while ago, and Humbedooh added on to that to do the rewrite to GitHub. Basically what all that does is once your Apache ID is created, or if you have one already, you go on ID.apache.org, you add your GitHub username in there and then MATT --there's another part of that called Grouper-- MATT and/or Grouper will run periodically, pull data from our LDAP system and say, "Oh, ChrisT at apache.org has ChrisT as his GitHub ID. I'll pull those down." It says, "ChrisT is in the Infrastructure group. Hey look, there's an Infrastructure group in GitHub. I'll give ChrisT write access to the GitHub project." In a nutshell, that's what that does.


There's a ton of other house cleaning things, if you get removed from the LDAP group ... we run LDAP and keep all this stuff straight. If you get removed from the Infrastructure group at LDAP then MATT/Grouper will go and say, "Oh, this person's not in this LDAP group but they do have access in GitHub. Let me pull that so that they don't have access to that any more." It does housekeeping of everything as well as additions to groups and that kind of thing. There's a ton of technical backend to that, and that's what Humbedooh's doing. 


At first when Git and GitHub were set up, it was fine: the ASF has to keep canonical everything about what goes into each project. You could only write to our Git repos. Then it was conveniently mirrored out to GitHub because there's a lot of tools that GitHub has that we didn't have or weren't prepared to set up. GitHub has a very familiar way of doing things for a lot of developers. Once GitHub Writable came along with Gitbox and the changes to MATT, that opened up a whole other world of tools for people on projects to use. If they wanted to use pull requests on GitHub, they could start using pull requests on GitHub to manage code. They could wire up their build systems to GitHub with Jenkins so that whenever a PR was submitted and got approved, it would kick off a build in Jenkins and go through unit tests and do all the lovely things that Jenkins does.


It was really an evolution of, "Here's the service that we have. Someone, somewhere, be it infrastructure or otherwise, once they have writable GitHub access, here we go." And here's the swath of things that that now opens up to projects inside the ASF that if they could come and set up a project with us, and then never, ever actually commit code to the ASF, it would always go to GitHub but still be safe and saved on our GitHub servers for ASF project reasons.


At the same point, we saw a need and said, "Let's build this out and go." Another funnel that comes into us is when we're on-call, something breaks and we ask, "Why do we do it this way? We should be doing it a different way." We then come up with a project to fix that or build it. It's a very interesting process of how work gets into the Infrastructure team.


It's been an interesting ride with that one.


There's always stuff that we're working and fixing and making better. For the most part, Gitbox as it is now is kind of in a state of "It's getting worked on". If there are bugs that need fixed, it gets fixed, but I don't know what the next feature request is on Gitbox. There's talk of other services ...like GitLab. If someone wanted to write code and put it in GitLab as opposed to  GitHub, then someone would need to come in and write the connector from Gitbox to GitLab. So it's possible. I don't know if that's necessarily an Infrastructure need as much as it is a volunteer need for infra. But it's a system that can be set up to any other Git service as long as someone goes in and writes that.


You brought up an interesting point here, which is volunteers. Do volunteers contribute to Infra also? 


We sometimes have volunteers, yes. We have a lot of people on the infra mailing lists that will bounce ideas back to us or they'll work on a ticket or put in a pull request.


Well, the need is not as critical because you have a paid team, versus Apache projects. 


Right. That's exactly true. There's a bit of a wall that we have to have because we work with Foundation data, which not everyone has access to. Granted, we're a non-profit, Open Source company and everything's out there to begin with, but usernames and passwords of databases and things that we have encrypted that the team has access to isn't necessarily something that you would want any volunteer to have access to.


How do you stay ahead of demand? This is a really interesting thing because part of it is you're saying, "Necessity is the mother of invention." You guys are doing stuff because you've got those binary, "break-fix" types of scenarios. In an ideal situation, do you even have enough runway to be able to optimize your processes? How do you have the opportunity to fix things and improve things as you're going along if you're firefighting pretty much all day long?


That's a really good question about just how our workflow is. In other companies that I've been in, there's the operations people that are doing the "break-fix", and then there's the development people that are doing "the next big thing". The break-fix folks are spinning the plates and keeping them spun without breaking, and that's a lot of firefighting. That's literally all that job is. Even when you're not firefighting, you're sitting around thinking about firefighting in a sense of, “when is this going to fall over again? If it does fall over, what can we do to fix it so it doesn't do that anymore?" And in the past, the break-fix guys, the firefighters, would end up saying, "Hey, there's this thing that needs fixed." And it would fall over the wall to the developers. They would develop the fix for it, and then it would go back into production and then the cycle continues. 


To some extent, that's kind of where DevOps came from: if you merge the two of those together, then while you're firefighting you can also write the fix for the problem, and then you don't have to wait for the lag between the two. We don't have that split here. Everyone on the team is firefighting with one hand and typing out the solution with another. And a lot of the times our project work, like getting a new mail server spun up or my task to rewrite the workflow for new Apache ID creations, I've been working on that for a very long time because it will keep falling off ... it gets put on the backburner while we're like, "Hey, we found out that our TLP servers are getting hammered with downloads from apps and people trying to use them instead of the mirror servers." So, let's set up downloads.apache.org and we can funnel stuff over to that so that that server can get hammered and do whatever it needs to do so that our www. site and all the Apache Project websites stay up and running in a more reliable way.


What's the size of the teams that you were dealing with before that had a firefighting team and a dev team versus ASF infra?


The last "big" corporate job I had was ...six ops people that kept the site going, four database people, another eight technical operations-type people… all-told it was about thirty.


There were technically thirty firefighting people and we had a NOC (network operations center) that was literally people that only watched dashboards and watched for alerts. Whenever those go off, they’d call the firefighting people. The NOC was another 20 people. And then the development teams were ... twenty to fifty people.


What kind of consumer base were they accommodating? Does it match the volume that ASF has? Was it more of a direct, enterprise type of, "We have a customer that's paying, we have to respond to them" situation? Or is it different?


This was at a financial services company that transacted on their Website: completely different from the type of stuff we're dealing with here at the ASF. Volume-wise, they were much smaller, but it was much more ...visible, as their big times were at the start of market and end of market. After end-of-market came all the processing for the day to get done before markets started the next day. The site had to be up 100% of the time. We had SLAs of five minutes. If you got paged or something broke, you had to get the page and respond to it in a way of, "Hey, this is what's going on and these are the people that I need involved with it," all within five minutes of it going off. That was the way the management structure was. It was intense.


In scale, Apache probably does way more: they do way more traffic across all of our services in any given day. If someone doesn't get mail for a little bit, then they come and tell us or we get alerted of it by our systems, and we go and we fix it and we take care of it. But with the financial services group, people were losing money: dealing with people and money is just a very stressful situation for anyone working in technology because you have to get it right and it has to be done as fast as possible before someone's kids can’t go to college anymore. It was a completely different minefield to navigate.


The type of stress that's involved or the type of demand or the pressure is different, but you also have the responsibility with ASF that systems have to be up and running. I understand it's not mission critical if something goes down for more than five minutes, which is different in the financial sector, but do you feel that same type of pressure? Is it there or is it completely different for you? 


No. I think I do because we also have SLAs here: they're just not five minutes. We have structure around that and the way that we handle uptime and that kind of thing. I get very attached to the technology that I'm working with and the communities that I'm working with, so if a server goes down or a site's acting wonky, I take that very personally. That reflects on how I do my job. If a server's not working or if something's broken either because of me or something externally that's going on, I want to get that up and running as fast as possible because that's how I would expect anyone to work in a field that has ...any technology field, for that matter. And generally, that's the same attitude the rest of the team has as well.


How has ASF Infra changed over the years?


It's matured quite a bit. When I first started, it was Gavin, Fluxo, Humbedooh, Pono (former ASF Infrastructure team member Daniel Takamori), and me. There were five of us. The amount of stuff that we got done, I'm like, "Man, there's no way that five people can do this."


That's kind of what I'm pointing at. If you're a team of eight or five or twelve or whatever, compared to the other thing that you did with the other job that had maybe a core team of twenty, thirty --that in itself is insane.


We were five people, everything was very, "Here's the shiny thing we're working on," and then something else would come up and we'd have to jump on that. Then something else would come up and we'd have to jump on that. We were very ...I don't want to say we were stretched thin, but there wasn't necessarily ...time for improvement.


There was a lot of stuff we had still in physical hardware, and a couple of vendors that we no longer use. But things were moving more towards a configuration-based infrastructure with Puppet instead of one person building a machine, setting up all the configs themselves, installing everything and then letting it go off into the ether to run and do its job. We were moving everything towards Puppet to where you configure Puppet to configure the server. So then if the server breaks, or goes down or goes away or we need to move vendors or whatever, all you need to do is spin up a new server somewhere else, give it the Puppet config, it configures itself and then goes off into the ether to run and do whatever it needs to do.


That's great. More automation.


Right. We were automating a lot more stuff right when I first started. Over the course of the next year, the team kind of ebbed and flowed a little bit until we were eight in the last year. We started to get to the point of "where can we point the gun to next? What can we target next to get it taken care of and done?" That's where we started taking on more specific infra projects, for instance, mail. Our mail server has been around since the dawn of time, and it's virtualized so it moves servers every now and then, but the same base of it is quite old in technology standards.


Fluxo started moving this on to newer stuff and he got that going. We started taking care of projects that were not broken, but needed to be worked on. Instead of waiting for it to break, we're fixing and upgrading and moving down that path versus firefighting, break-fix, that kind of thing. We were moving more towards, "Hey, I see a problem. I have time. I'm going to take care of that and make that into a more serviceable system." 


Automation has helped quite a bit with that. I also think that just as the team grew, it just got to a point where I think tickets were getting responded to quicker, emails, chat was responded to quicker. And then we also could focus more on the tools that we use for the foundation. Like, HipChat was going away. We needed a new chat platform, so we chose Slack. And then we updated and moved everything over to Slack, and that's where we are with that. It started following into its own with workflows of like, "Oh, okay. How do we get this done? Let's go do that."


What areas are you experiencing your biggest growth? Is it a technical area? Like, "Hey, all of a sudden mail's out of control"? Or, "Hey, we need to satiate the demand for more virtual machines," or is it a geographic influence that's coming in in terms of draw? Where are you guys pointing all your guns to?


Currently we're trying to get more out to the projects and talk to people more often. Not that we didn't do that before, because ApacheCons and any Meetups that we had, Infra would always have a table. We were always accessible, but we were always passively accessible. We weren't really going out and talking to projects proactively to say, "Hey. What do you guys need from us? What are we doing with this?" So I think that's one part of it, that I think that we're moving towards a little bit. It's not at all technical, but more of a foundation broadening, community broadening thing that we're doing.


That's one part of it. The other thing that we're doing too is from a more technical or infrastructure standpoint, is we're really trying to get our arms around all of the services we provide, and then really take a look at those and say, how is this used inside the ASF? How is it used in the industry as a whole? Do we need to put more time and energy towards those things in order to make the offerings of the infrastructure team a little bit a more solid platform, kind of thing? Generally, that ... and on top of any other automation and that kind of stuff, I think that's really the two spots that I see infra growing in a lot in the next year-ish of just really boiling down our services to, "Hey, we've seen a lot of people using this. And a lot more projects are using this. It's not just a flash in the pan. We need to build out more infra around blah service, so let's really do that and make that a solid platform to use."


What do you think people would be surprised to know about ASF Infra? When you tell someone something about your job and they go, "Whoa, I had no idea" or, "That's crazy." What would people be surprised to know?


That Apache has an infrastructure team. [laughs]


Why are you saying that?


Because honestly, I don't think a lot of people know about the Infrastructure team. Those that do, have used us for something, not used us for something, have talked to us about something, and worked with us on something. Those that don't are like, "Oh, I didn't know the ASF paid people to be here," --that kind of thing. That's kind of the two reactions I've got from people. It's like, "Oh, that's cool. You work for the infrastructure team." Shrug. And then the other people are like, "Oh, sweet. Yeah, that's great. I know Gav. I've worked with him on blah, blah, blah." But that's not necessarily surprising. I mean, it is in a sort of way. 


When people ask, "What are you doing for work?" and you say you work for ASF, do people even know what that is? Do they know what you're doing? Do they care? Are they like, "Oh, okay. Whatever"?


There's literally three types of people that I've run into that ask, "Oh, what are you doing for work?" One person is the person that has no idea what the ASF is, not even the vaguest hint of Apache, and they're like, "Oh, okay. That's cool." There's that next person that does, and may or may not know about the ASF but knows of Apache, the Web server, or some other lineage of that.  They're like, "Oh, whoa. That's super cool. It's impressive.” That's wild. Then the third people ask "Why are ‘Indians’/Native Americans running software? That doesn't make any sense to me" and "Are you on a reserve?" I swear to God I've gotten that question before. I don't even know how to answer that. I'm like, "No, buddy."


Are these technologists or are these just guys off the street? Are they in the industry?


Guys off the street. I say Apache Software Foundation, and they're like "Apache" and "software" doesn’t make sense. Actually I've gotten mean tweets too whenever I've been tweeting about being at ApacheCon. Things like I'm "taking away" from Native Americans and whatever...


We also get that on Twitter, on the Foundation side: we get included in tweets about some kind of violation along the lines of, "Stand up for the ..." I get it. From time to time we also get sent these "How dare you?" letters, that sort of kind of thing. It's an interesting challenge, the whole issue of "why do Native Americans run this thing?" misinterpretation.


Let’s move on. What's your favorite part of your job?


The whole job is my favorite part of the job.


That's funny because everyone at Infra ... You know how people have bad days or may be grumpy or whatever, in general you guys seem to all like each other. You all have a great camaraderie. You all get along. You work really closely together. It's a very interesting thing to see from the outside. Is that true? Or are you just playing it up? Does it really work that way?


That's absolutely true. I've found that generally speaking, when you get a bunch of nerds together, they either really like each other and everything works or they really don't like each other and nothing gets done. The team is great, and it's like no other team I've ever worked with before. But it's very odd because you go through the interview process, and the interviews are interviews. I mean, you get to know people in interviews, but not really. Then you start working with people, and at some point you start getting below the surface. And at some point you get deep enough to where you find out whether or not ...how you gel with all these people. 


It's very odd that all of us have the same general sense of humor. We'll talk about food non-stop in the channel, and recipes and cooking, and different beers or different whatevers. It's nice to get to that point with a team that you're comfortable enough with everybody to ... like I said, I've been here three years and there is still so much that I don't know, both technical and non-technical, about the ASF. I ask very dumb questions in channel and say, "I have no idea why this is doing this this way," or, "Can someone else take a look?" or, "I don't know what I'm doing here." And never in the entire time I've been here, from the day one until now, has anyone ever chastised me for not knowing something or said anything about the way that I work or something like that. Well, at least not in channel. At least not publicly. 


Everyone's very supportive. It doesn't matter if you know everything there possibly is to know about one singular product or thing you're working on, or don't know anything about it. You can ask questions and really learn about why it was done the way it was done, or figure out how to fix a problem. No problem on the team. It's just like, "Okay, yeah. This is what you have to do." Or, "Here's a document. Read up on it." Or, "I don't know either." And then out of that comes an hour of conversation and then a document pops out, and then the next person that asks, we can say, "Here, go read the doc." Yeah. I mean, we're all very happy. Very happy.


Which is really good. Looking back when you first started, what was your biggest challenge when you came onto the team?


Oh man. I look back at that and I feel like the learning curve was ... It wasn't a curve. It was a wall. I've used Linux, I've used Ubuntu for a while and various other flavors of Debian and whatnot, so getting spun up on all of ...expanding my Linux knowledge was a big deal, expanding everything about the ASF and how it works. Which I'm still trying to figure out. If you know, send me something to read to figure out how that all works. I mean, I don't want to sound like I was completely out of my depth and I have no idea what I'm doing, but I feel like I was completely out of my depth and I had no idea what I was doing. 


There's a lot about the ASF that is just tribal knowledge, and there's a lot about Infra that's tribal knowledge. It's just no one has anything written down --"the server's been running under Jim's desk for the last 15 years in a basement that has battery backups and redundant Internet, so it's never gone down. But don't ever touch that server, because if it goes down, then all of our mail goes down" or whatever. There was a lot of figuring all that out for myself and digging around. Which is, frankly, one of the parts that I really enjoy, is just, "Hey, this thing broke. I've no idea what that thing is. I've no idea where it lives," and just diving in and trying to figure out what's going on with it and how it's built, and then the hair trigger that sets it off to crash and never work again. Yeah. That's an interesting question too.


What are you most proud of in your Infra career to date? You're talking about overcoming these challenges, I'm always curious just to see what people are like, "Yeah, I'm patting myself on the back for that one" or, "Ta-da. That's my ta-da moment."


I did lightning talks at ApacheCon Las Vegas and didn't get a phone call from you when I was done. [laughs]


I wasn't at lightning talks --what did you say? What would make me call you?


I didn't say it. We were on stage, and it's John (former ASF Infrastructure team member John Andrunas), Drew (ASF Infrastructure team member Drew Foulks), and I, and we figured we'd do lightning talks: "Hey, we're the new guys: ask us infrastructure questions." A week or two before ApacheCon, there was a massive outage at a particular vendor. It wasn't: "Oh, our server's down for a while," the server went down and then it was *gone*. It got erased from the vendor side. I can't remember what service it was. There was something that disappeared two weeks before Vegas and never came back. 


It wasn't just us, though: tons of companies had this issue. So we're on stage answering questions, and someone asks where this service went: "What happened to XYZ?" And John has the mic and he goes, "You should probably go ask [vendor name]." At that point it was very widely published that the vendor"s response was like, "Whoops, someone tripped over the cord that powered the data center. And when it came back up, then deleted all of your VMs.” They totally acknowledged it and they didn't give refunds for it, so it was a little bit of a PR kerfuffle for them. The vendor is in the other room handing out buttons and stickers, and John was like, "Oh yeah, go ask the [vendor] guys what happened to your server. That's their fault," he said it jokingly but my jaw dropped. 


[laughs] No one told me this story. No one said anything. Someone's trying to protect you. I had no idea this happened ...oh my gosh.


Well, David Nalley was in the back of the room, and he's screaming with his hands cupped around his mouth, "Don't badmouth the vendor and the sponsors." I deflected and quickly moved onto something else. [laughs]


But yes, that's another good question that I haven't actually reflected on. Looking back and seeing where Infra was when I first started and where it is now, it was a very runnable and very good team then, and it's a very runnable and it's a very good team now. I feel like a lot of the work that I've done and a lot of the work that the team has done over the last three years has been getting from a spot of "everything's on fire, who's holding up what this weekend?" to things being stable and us nitpicking on whether or not something needs to be updated or not. That's huge. That's a big step from like starting a company and treading water to being profitable and having resources to do other things versus just keeping your employees paid. I mean, it's a big step for a company and it's a big step for Infrastructure.


I love your talking about how you guys are tightly-knit and all that. How would your co-workers describe you?


The other odd part about that too is being completely remote and not having day-to-day, face-to-face interactions with people. You get a very odd sense of people through text for a 24-hour period that you're online reading stuff. It's a different perspective than if I was in the office every day, working on something and interacting with people. Even though every day, except for the weekends, I'm online talking to these guys and doing stuff. How would they describe me? Dashingly good looking and ... I don't know. [laughs]


I know that Infra's "just Infra," right --you guys are all under the Infra umbrella. Do you have a title? When you got hired, what do they call you?


We're all systems administrators. The only person that actually has a title is Greg, and he's Infrastructure Administrator.


What are the biggest threats you face? For infra folks or systems administrators or infrastructure administrators even, what do you need to watch out for these days? What's big in the industry? Is everyone saying, "Oh, XYZ's coming"? In terms of your role in the job: is there something that you need to keep your eye on? Is there something that you would advise other people, "If you're in this job keep an eye out for blah, this is a new threat" or anything along those lines?


General scope stuff. 16 years ago, everything was hardware: you bought hardware and you had to physically put it somewhere. And virtual machines came along about the same time. People were starting to do virtual stuff to where you could have a physical machine and then multiple machines running on that, sharing resources. Then cloud and infrastructure as a service, and everything's been moving more and more towards that over the years.


Of course, there's still people that work in office IT, doing desk support stuff or office infrastructure type things.Those are still a majority of how things run at companies. As everything is moved more towards the cloud or hosted services, more systems administrators are becoming more like software engineers. And software engineers are becoming more like systems administrators. They're kind of melding into one, big group of people. Now of course, there are still people that only write software. But gone are the days where it used to be someone would write some code and say, "I need to deploy it and get it out to all these computers." They would write the code, they'd hand it off to a systems person. Systems would go and configure on whatever server to get it out to however many machines and hit the button and go. The software developer never really needed to know hardware specifics of the systems that it was going to run on. And the systems people never really needed to know what software packages this was getting put together. There's exceptions to that, but for the most part ... 


Over the years, it's fallen into a thing now where the software developer knows exactly what systems this is going to run on and how it's going to run there, so it's more efficient and things work better and they're releasing less buggy code based on the fact that they know they're closer to the hardware. And the systems people, they want to troubleshoot it more and work with it and fix problems because they're closer to the software and know more about its internal workings and how it's going to run on systems. Everything is getting more and more chunked down into, first it was VMs, then it's cloud, then it's containers with Docker and things like that, and it's going to get more virtualized down into that. Knowing about Docker orchestration and things like Kubernetes and Apache Mesos. The reality is other people run Kubernetes, people run Docker, people run everything. That's the interesting thing in terms of how they do it at ASF. We don't require folks to do just one thing.


In terms of where the industry's going ... everything's getting pushed down to "a developer can work in a container on a set of systems, write software for that and then deploy that to a machine themselves, never involving a systems engineer at all, and build a product using that." It's getting stuff out the door faster, and it's also keeping the unicorn of the industry a while to go ... even today, I developed this thing, it works on my machine. If I move it over to another computer, it stops working. Why? What's the problem with that? Containering or containers fix that problem. The container you run on my system runs the same way as it does on every system everywhere. It takes the "runs on my machine" thing out of the equation. 


What's your greatest piece of advice? What would you tell aspiring sysadmins?


Part of the ASF is the community behind it, and a giant part of that is what makes it work. I mean, you could say all of it. That's what makes everything work with this. Right when I first started the sysadmin kind of thing, I didn't get into Meetups and Linux Users Groups and any of that stuff. I didn't get into the network. I didn't go into the community that I had around me. And honestly, I don't know if that's because it didn't exist or because I didn't know about it or what, but now that I'm older and wiser, the community part of it is really ...there's a massive benefit to that. Aside from socialization, or networking and how to get a better job through networking, getting together with like-minded people and talking through your problems is an amazing tool to use. And I didn't do that enough when I was a sysadmin starting out, and looking back it's something that I sort of regret not doing, was really sharing knowledge with other people in the community and building a group of people that I could ping ideas off of, or help with other ideas, or share in the knowledge of, "Hey, this is what's going on in the industry" or, "Hey, I saw this at work the other day. How do we work around that?" or that kind of thing. It's much easier these days with social media: the never-ending amounts of social media. But it's a big, important part of my day-to-day now, that I wish I had 16 years ago.


That's powerful. OK, If you had a magic wand, what would you see happen with ASF infra?


If I had a magic wand, I'd update our mail server instantly or maybe magic wand a few other projects.


Wait. I know you're joking, but what is the problem with the mail server?


It's running on an older version FreeBSD that doesn't play well with our current tools. Some form of that server has been upgraded, patched, moved, migrated, etc for the last 20 years. We want to bring it up to more modern standards. Mail runs fine for the most part, but it's probably the most critical service we have at the ASF and we want to make sure everything continues to hum along. Because of that, it's a huge project that touches a ton of different parts of our infrastructure.


How big is it?


It's all of our email. Every email that goes through an apache.org address.


This is a huge project and Chris (Lambertus) has been working on it for a while --it's not a simple thing to fix. It's very, very complicated. We couldn’t do it without him.


Back to the magic wand thing: I'd wish for more wands. 


Chris is based in Pennsylvania on UTC -4. His favorite thing to eat during the workday is chicken ramen.


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Posted at 11:09PM Mar 31, 2020 by Sally in General  |   | 

Friday March 27, 2020

The Apache News Round-up: week ending 27 March 2020

Farewell, March --we're wrapping up the month with another great week. Here are the latest updates on the Apache community's activities:

Break out the cake, balloons, and streamers! The Apache® Software Foundation Celebrates 21 Years of Open Source Leadership – world’s largest Open Source foundation advances community-led innovation "The Apache Way" https://s.apache.org/21stAnniversary 

ASF Board – management and oversight of the business affairs of the corporation in accordance with the Foundation's bylaws.
 - Next Board Meeting: 15 April 2020. Board calendar and minutes http://apache.org/foundation/board/calendar.html

ApacheCon™ – the ASF's official global conference series, bringing Tomorrow's Technology Today since 1998.
 - Event status details posted at: Notice on Apache 2020 Conferences https://s.apache.org/zgm8m

ASF Infrastructure – our distributed team on three continents keeps the ASF's infrastructure running around the clock.
 - 7M+ weekly checks yield uptime at 99.99%. Performance checks across 50 different service components spread over more than 250 machines in data centers around the world. http://www.apache.org/uptime/

Apache Code Snapshot – this week, 881 Apache contributors changed 1,209,097 lines of code over 3,932 commits. Top 5 contributors, in order, are: Carlos Rovira, Jean-Baptiste Onofré, Andi Huber, Claus Ibsen, and Garren Smith.         

Apache Project Announcements – the latest updates by category.

Application Performance Management --
 - Apache SkyWalking 7.0.0 released https://skywalking.apache.org/

Big Data --
 - Apache NiFi 1.11.4 released https://nifi.apache.org/

Content --
 - Apache Jackrabbit Oak 1.8.21 and 1.26.0 released https://jackrabbit.apache.org/

Messaging --
 - Apache Qpid Dispatch 1.11.0 released https://qpid.apache.org/ 

Search --
 -  Apache Lucene 8.5.0 and Solr 8.5.0 released https://lucene.apache.org/   


Did You Know?

 - Did you know that Chinese courier company Yunda Express uses Apache SkyWalking to ship critical supplies (masks, protective suits, medicine, and food) to those battling the COVID-19 coronavirus? http://skywalking.apache.org/ 

 - Did you know that Apache Kudu has benchmarked ingesting 100B time series points per day? http://kudu.apache.org/ 

 - Did you know that the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Rondônia, Brazil, offers free courses on Web development that include Apache Wicket? https://wicket.apache.org/ 


Apache Community Notices:

 - The Apache Software Foundation Statement on the COVID-19 Coronavirus Outbreak https://s.apache.org/COVID-19  

 - Apache Month In Review: February 2020 – overview of events that have taken place within the Apache community https://s.apache.org/Feb2020

 - The Apache Software Foundation Operations Summary: Q3 FY2020 (November 2019 - January 2020) https://s.apache.org/r6s5u  

 - "Trillions and Trillions Served", the documentary on the ASF, is in post-production. Catch the teaser at https://s.apache.org/ASF-Trillions

 - Apache in 2019 - By The Digits https://s.apache.org/Apache2019Digits

 - The Apache Way to Sustainable Open Source Success https://s.apache.org/GhnI

 - ASF Operations Summary: Q2 FY2020 (August - October 2019) https://s.apache.org/2kv2n

 - ASF Founders look back on 20 Years of the ASF https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/our-founders-look-back-on

 - Foundation Reports and Statements http://www.apache.org/foundation/reports.html

 - ApacheCon: Tomorrow's Technology Today since 1998 http://s.apache.org/ApacheCon

 - "Success at Apache" focuses on the people and processes behind why the ASF "just works". https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/category/SuccessAtApache

 - Please follow/like/re-tweet the ASF on social media: @TheASF on Twitter (https://twitter.com/TheASF) and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-apache-software-foundation

 - Do friend and follow us on the Apache Community Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ApacheSoftwareFoundation/ and Twitter account https://twitter.com/ApacheCommunity

 - Find out how you can participate with Apache community/projects/activities --opportunities open with Apache Camel, Apache HTTP Server, and more! https://helpwanted.apache.org/

 - Are your software solutions Powered by Apache? Download & use our "Powered By" logos http://www.apache.org/foundation/press/kit/#poweredby

= = =

For real-time updates, sign up for Apache-related news by sending mail to announce-subscribe@apache.org and follow @TheASF on Twitter. For a broader spectrum from the Apache community, https://twitter.com/PlanetApache provides an aggregate of Project activities as well as the personal blogs and tweets of select ASF Committers.

Posted at 07:30AM Mar 27, 2020 by Swapnil M Mane in Newsletter  |   | 

Thursday March 26, 2020

The Apache® Software Foundation Celebrates 21 Years of Open Source Leadership

World’s largest Open Source foundation advances community-led innovation "The Apache Way"


Wakefield, MA —26 March 2020— The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced today its 21st Anniversary.


Advancing its mission of providing software for the public good, the ASF's all-volunteer community grew from 21 original Members overseeing the development of the Apache HTTP Server to 765 individual Members, 206 Apache Project Management Committees, and 7,600+ Committers shepherding 300 projects and 200M+ lines of Apache code valued at more than $20B.


Apache’s breakthrough technology touches every aspect of modern computing, powering most of the Internet, managing exabytes of data, executing teraflops of operations, and storing trillions of objects in virtually every industry. Apache projects are all freely-available, at 100% no cost, and with no licensing fees.


“Over the past two decades, The Apache Software Foundation has served as a trusted home for vendor-neutral, community-led collaboration,“ said David Nalley, Executive Vice President at The Apache Software Foundation. “Today, the ASF is a vanguard for Open Source, fostering project communities large and small, with a portfolio of best-in-class innovations upon which the world continues to rely.“

The Apache Way

As a community-led organization, the ASF is strictly vendor-neutral. Its independence ensures that no organization, including ASF Sponsors and those who employ contributors to Apache projects, is able to control a project's direction or has special privileges of any kind.

The ASF’s community-focused development process known as "The Apache Way" guides existing projects and their communities, and continues to inspire a new generation of innovations from around the world. The Apache Way edict involves:

  • Earned Authority: all individuals are given the opportunity to participate based on publicly earned merit, i.e., what they contribute to the community.

  • Community of Peers: individuals participate at the ASF, with merit gained by the individual everlasting and free from association of employment status or employer.

  • Open Communications: all communications related to code and decision-making are publicly accessible to ensure asynchronous collaboration within the ASF’s globally-distributed communities.

  • Consensus Decision Making: Apache Projects are overseen by a self-selected team of active volunteers who are contributing to their respective projects.

  • Responsible Oversight: The ASF governance model is based on trust and delegated oversight. 


The Apache Way has been a forerunner in collaborative computing, and has directly influenced the InnerSource methodology of applying Open Source and open development principles to an organization. The Apache Way has been adopted by countless organizations, including Capital One, Comcast, Ericsson, HP, IBM, Google, Microsoft, PayPal, SAP, T-Mobile, and many others.

The ASF’s focus on community is so integral to the Apache ethos that the maxim, "Community Over Code" is an unwavering tenet. Vibrant, diverse communities keep code alive, however, code, no matter how well written, cannot thrive without a community behind it. Members of the Apache community share their thoughts on “Why Apache” in the teaser for “Trillions and Trillions Served”, the upcoming documentary on the ASF https://s.apache.org/Trillions-teaser 

Powerhouse Projects

Dozens of enterprise-grade Apache projects have defined industries and serve as the backbone for some of the most visible and widely used applications in Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning, Big Data, Build Management, Cloud Computing, Content Management, DevOps, IoT and Edge Computing, Mobile, Servers, and Web Frameworks, among many other categories. 

 

No other software foundation serves the industry with such a wide range of projects. Examples of the breadth of applications that are "Powered by Apache" include:

 

  • China’s second largest courier, SF Express, uses Apache SkyWalking to ship critical COVID-19 coronavirus supplies worldwide;

  • Apache Guacamole’s clientless remote desktop gateway is helping thousands of individuals, businesses, and universities worldwide safely work from home without needing to be tied to a specific device, VPN, or client;

  • Alibaba uses Apache Flink to process more than 2.5 billion records per second for its merchandise dashboard and real-time customer recommendations;

  • the European Space Agency’s Jupiter spacecraft mission control is powered by Apache Karaf, Apache Maven, and Apache Groovy;

  • British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)’s application Gaffer stores and manages petabytes of data using Apache Accumulo, Apache HBase, and Apache Parquet;

  • Netflix uses Apache Druid to manage its 1.5 trillion-row data warehouse to manage what users see when tapping the Netflix icon or logging in from a browser across platforms;

  • Uber's 100-petabyte data lake is powered in near real-time using Apache Hudi (incubating), supporting everything from warehousing to advanced machine learning;

  • Boston Children's Hospital uses Apache cTAKES to link phenotypic and genomic data in electronic health records for the Precision Link Biobank for Health Discovery;

  • Amazon, DataStax, IBM, Microsoft, Neo4j, NBC Universal and many others use Apache Tinkerpop in their graph databases and to write complicated traversals; 

  • the Global Biodiversity Information Facility uses Apache Beam, Hadoop, HBase, Lucene, Spark, and others to integrate biodiversity data from nearly 1,600 institutions and more than a million species and nearly 1.4 billion location records freely available for research;

  • the European Commission developed its new API Gateway infrastructure using Apache Camel;

  • China Telecom Bestpay uses Apache ShardingSphere (incubating) to scale 10 billion datasets for mobile payments distributed across more than 30 applications;

  • Apple’s Siri uses Apache HBase to complete full ring replication around the world in 10 seconds;

  • the US Navy uses Apache Rya to power smart drones, autonomous small robot swarms, manned-unmanned team advanced tactical communications, and more; and

  • hundreds of millions of Websites worldwide are powered by the Apache HTTP Server.

Additional Milestones

In addition to the ASF’s 21st Anniversary, the greater Apache community are celebrating milestone anniversaries of the following projects:

25 Years - Apache HTTP Server

21 Years - Apache OpenOffice (at the ASF since 2011), Xalan, Xerces

20 Years - Apache Jakarta (Apache Open Source Java projects), James, mod_perl, Tcl, APR/Portable Runtime, Struts, Subversion (at the ASF since 2009), Tomcat

19 Years - Apache Avalon, Commons, log4j, Lucene, Torque, Turbine, Velocity

18 Years - Apache Ant, DB, FOP, Incubator, POI, Tapestry

17 Years - Apache Cocoon, James, Logging Services, Mavin, Web Services

16 Years - Apache Gump, Portals, Struts, Geronimo, SpamAssassin, Xalan, XML Graphics

15 Years - Apache Lucene, Directory, MyFaces, Xerces, Tomcat


The chronology of all Apache projects can be found at https://projects.apache.org/committees.html?date


The Apache Incubator is home to 45 projects undergoing development, spanning AI, Big Data, blockchain, Cloud computing, cryptography, deep learning, hardware, IoT, machine learning, microservices, mobile, operating systems, testing, visualization, and many other categories. The complete list of projects in the Incubator is available at http://incubator.apache.org/  

Support Apache 

The ASF advances the future of open development by providing Apache projects and their communities bandwidth, connectivity, servers, hardware, development environments, legal counsel, accounting services, trademark protection, marketing and publicity, educational events, and related administrative support.


As a United States private 501(c)(3) not-for-profit charitable organization, the ASF is sustained through tax-deductible corporate and individual contributions that offset day-to-day operating expenses. To support Apache, visit http://apache.org/foundation/contributing.html 

About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)
Established in 1999, The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is the world’s largest Open Source foundation, stewarding 200M+ lines of code and providing more than $20B+ worth of software to the public at 100% no cost. The ASF’s all-volunteer community grew from 21 original founders overseeing the Apache HTTP Server to 765 individual Members and 206 Project Management Committees who successfully lead 350+ Apache projects and initiatives in collaboration with 7,600 Committers through the ASF’s meritocratic process known as "The Apache Way". Apache software is integral to nearly every end user computing device, from laptops to tablets to mobile devices across enterprises and mission-critical applications. Apache projects power most of the Internet, manage exabytes of data, execute teraflops of operations, and store billions of objects in virtually every industry. The commercially-friendly and permissive Apache License v2 is an Open Source industry standard, helping launch billion dollar corporations and benefiting countless users worldwide. The ASF is a US 501(c)(3) not-for-profit charitable organization funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors including Aetna, Alibaba Cloud Computing, Amazon Web Services, Anonymous, ARM, Baidu, Bloomberg, Budget Direct, Capital One, CarGurus, Cerner, Cloudera, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Handshake, Huawei, IBM, Indeed, Inspur, Leaseweb, Microsoft, ODPi, Pineapple Fund, Private Internet Access, Red Hat, Target, Tencent, Union Investment, Verizon Media, and Workday. For more information, visit http://apache.org/ and https://twitter.com/TheASF


© The Apache Software Foundation. "Apache", "Accumulo", "Apache Accumulo", "Camel", "Apache Camel", "cTAKES", "Apache cTAKES", "Druid", "Apache Druid", "Flink", "Apache Flink", "Groovy", "Apache Groovy", "Guacamole", "Apache Guacamole", "HBase", "Apache HBase", "Apache HTTP Server", "Karaf", "Apache Karaf", "Maven", "Apache Maven", "Parquet", "Apache Parquet", "Rya", "Apache Rya", "SkyWalking, "Apache SkyWalking", "Tinkerpop", "Apache Tinkerpop", and "ApacheCon" are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries. All other brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.


# # #

Posted at 09:59AM Mar 26, 2020 by Sally in Milestones  |   | 

Friday March 20, 2020

The Apache News Round-up: week ending 20 March 2020

Greetings everyone --let's review what the Apache community has been up to over the past week:

In case you missed it: The Apache Software Foundation Statement on the COVID-19 Coronavirus Outbreak https://s.apache.org/COVID-19 

ASF Board – management and oversight of the business affairs of the corporation in accordance with the Foundation's bylaws.
 - Next Board Meeting: 15 April 2020. Board calendar and minutes http://apache.org/foundation/board/calendar.html

ApacheCon™ – the ASF's official global conference series, bringing Tomorrow's Technology Today since 1998.
 - Event status details posted at: Notice on Apache 2020 Conferences https://s.apache.org/zgm8m

Apache Community Development  – the committee that welcomes new participants to the Apache community and mentors them in "The Apache Way".
 - Warsaw, Poland, joins Indore, India and Beijing, China as the latest Apache Local Community (ALC) Chapter https://s.apache.org/o3ixu
 - About the Apache Local Community program https://s.apache.org/alc

ASF Infrastructure – our distributed team on three continents keeps the ASF's infrastructure running around the clock.
 - 7M+ weekly checks yield uptime at 99.95%. Performance checks across 50 different service components spread over more than 250 machines in data centers around the world. http://www.apache.org/uptime/

Apache Code Snapshot – this week, 910 Apache contributors changed 1,815,364 lines of code over 3,659 commits. Top 5 contributors, in order, are: Andrea Cosentino, Dan Haywood, Claus Ibsen, Julian Reschke, and Colm O hEigeartaigh.      

Apache Project Announcements – the latest updates by category.

Content --
 - Apache Jackrabbit Oak 1.22.2 released https://jackrabbit.apache.org/
 - Apache Tika 1.24 released https://tika.apache.org/

Messaging --
 - Apache Qpid JMS 0.50.0 released https://qpid.apache.org/

Servers --
 - Apache Tomcat 7.0.103, 8.5.53, 9.0.33, and 10.0.0-M3 released https://tomcat.apache.org/   


Did You Know?

 - Did you know that more than 60% of Apache projects use Apache Maven for build management? https://maven.apache.org/ 

 - Did you know that you can help the Apache Fluo project? Find out how at https://helpwanted.apache.org/ 

 - Did you know that you can purchase swag (stickers, clothing, mugs, wall art, and more) for your favorite Apache projects at https://www.redbubble.com/people/comdev/shop ? Email dev@community.apache.org to have new projects added to the group!


Apache Community Notices:

 - Apache Month In Review: February 2020 – overview of events that have taken place within the Apache community https://s.apache.org/Feb2020

 - The Apache Software Foundation Operations Summary: Q3 FY2020 (November 2019 - January 2020) https://s.apache.org/r6s5u  

 - "Trillions and Trillions Served", the documentary on the ASF, is in post-production. Catch the teaser at https://s.apache.org/ASF-Trillions

 - Apache in 2019 - By The Digits https://s.apache.org/Apache2019Digits

 - The Apache Way to Sustainable Open Source Success https://s.apache.org/GhnI

 - ASF Operations Summary: Q2 FY2020 (August - October 2019) https://s.apache.org/2kv2n

 - ASF Founders look back on 20 Years of the ASF https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/our-founders-look-back-on

 - Foundation Reports and Statements http://www.apache.org/foundation/reports.html

 - ApacheCon: Tomorrow's Technology Today since 1998 http://s.apache.org/ApacheCon

 - "Success at Apache" focuses on the people and processes behind why the ASF "just works". https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/category/SuccessAtApache

 - Please follow/like/re-tweet the ASF on social media: @TheASF on Twitter (https://twitter.com/TheASF) and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-apache-software-foundation

 - Do friend and follow us on the Apache Community Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ApacheSoftwareFoundation/ and Twitter account https://twitter.com/ApacheCommunity

 - Find out how you can participate with Apache community/projects/activities --opportunities open with Apache Camel, Apache HTTP Server, and more! https://helpwanted.apache.org/

 - Are your software solutions Powered by Apache? Download & use our "Powered By" logos http://www.apache.org/foundation/press/kit/#poweredby

= = =

For real-time updates, sign up for Apache-related news by sending mail to announce-subscribe@apache.org and follow @TheASF on Twitter. For a broader spectrum from the Apache community, https://twitter.com/PlanetApache provides an aggregate of Project activities as well as the personal blogs and tweets of select ASF Committers.

Posted at 11:34AM Mar 20, 2020 by Swapnil M Mane in Newsletter  |   | 

Friday March 13, 2020

The Apache News Round-up: week ending 13 March 2020

Greetings everyone --it's time to review the Apache community's activities from the past week:

The Apache Software Foundation Statement on the COVID-19 Coronavirus Outbreak https://s.apache.org/COVID-19

Apache Month In Review – a summary of what the Apache community has been up to in February https://s.apache.org/Feb2020

ASF Board – management and oversight of the business affairs of the corporation in accordance with the Foundation's bylaws.
 - The Apache Software Foundation Operations Summary: Q3 FY2020 (November 2019 - January 2020) https://s.apache.org/r6s5u
 - Next Board Meeting: 18 March 2020. Board calendar and minutes http://apache.org/foundation/board/calendar.html

ApacheCon™ – the ASF's official global conference series, bringing Tomorrow's Technology Today since 1998.
 - Notice on Apache 2020 Conferences https://s.apache.org/zgm8m

ASF Infrastructure – our distributed team on three continents keeps the ASF's infrastructure running around the clock.
 - 7M+ weekly checks yield uptime at 99.66%. Performance checks across 50 different service components spread over more than 250 machines in data centers around the world. http://www.apache.org/uptime/

Apache Code Snapshot – this week, 861 Apache contributors changed 9,213,465 lines of code over 3,428 commits. Top 5 contributors, in order, are: Andrea Cosentino, Luca Burgazzoli, Mark Thomas, Jialin Qiao, and Carlos Rovira.      

Apache Project Announcements – the latest updates by category.

Big Data --
 - Apache Calcite 1.22.0 released https://calcite.apache.org/
 - Apache Kafka 2.4.1 released https://kafka.apache.org/ 

Content --
 - Apache Jackrabbit 2.18.5 released https://jackrabbit.apache.org/

Enterprise Processes Automation / ERP --
 - Apache OFBiz 17.12.01 released https://ofbiz.apache.org/

Libraries --
 - Apache Commons Configuration 2.7 released https://commons.apache.org/

Messaging --
 - Apache Qpid Broker-J 8.0.0 released https://qpid.apache.org/

Programming Languages --
 - Apache Groovy 2.5.10 and 3.0.2 released https://groovy.apache.org/

Servers --
 - Apache Tomcat Connectors 1.2.48 released https://tomcat.apache.org/connectors-doc/  
 -  Apache HttpComponents Client 4.5.12 GA released https://hc.apache.org/

Templating --
 - Apache FreeMarker 2.3.30 released https://freemarker.apache.org/


Did You Know?

 - Did you know that the following Apache projects are celebrating anniversaries this month? Apache mod_perl (20 years); Maven (17 years), Jackrabbit (14 years); Felix (13 years); Archiva (12 years); UIMA (10 years); Accumulo and Sqoop (8 years); Bloodhound, CloudStack, and cTAKES (7 years); Allura, Olingo, Tajo (6 years); Sentry (4 years); and FreeMarker (2 years). Many happy returns! https://projects.apache.org/committees.html?date

 - Did you know that you can participate in the second annual Apache Druid community survey? https://surveymonkey.com/r/XGWX2BL

 - Did you know that Apache Brooklyn v1.0 implements the OASIS CAMP (Cloud Application Management for Platforms) and TOSCA (Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications) standards? https://brooklyn.apache.org/


Apache Community Notices:

 - Apache Month In Review: February 2020 – overview of events that have taken place within the Apache community https://s.apache.org/Feb2020

 - "Trillions and Trillions Served", the documentary on the ASF, is in post-production. Catch the teaser at https://s.apache.org/ASF-Trillions

 - Apache in 2019 - By The Digits https://s.apache.org/Apache2019Digits

 - The Apache Way to Sustainable Open Source Success https://s.apache.org/GhnI

 - ASF Operations Summary: Q2 FY2020 (August - October 2019) https://s.apache.org/2kv2n

 - Celebrating 20 Years Community-led Development "The Apache Way" https://s.apache.org/ASF20thAnniversary

 - ASF Founders look back on 20 Years of the ASF https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/our-founders-look-back-on

 - Foundation Reports and Statements http://www.apache.org/foundation/reports.html

 - ApacheCon: Tomorrow's Technology Today since 1998 http://s.apache.org/ApacheCon

 - ASF Annual Report for FY2019 https://s.apache.org/FY2019AnnualReport

 - The Apache Software Foundation 2018 Vision Statement https://s.apache.org/zqC3

 - Foundation Statement –Apache Is Open. https://s.apache.org/PIRA

 - Pre-registration open for the first Pulsar Summit http://pulsar.apache.org/blog/2019/12/18/Pulsar-summit-cfp/

 - "Success at Apache" focuses on the people and processes behind why the ASF "just works". https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/category/SuccessAtApache

 - Please follow/like/re-tweet the ASF on social media: @TheASF on Twitter (https://twitter.com/TheASF) and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-apache-software-foundation

 - Do friend and follow us on the Apache Community Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ApacheSoftwareFoundation/ and Twitter account https://twitter.com/ApacheCommunity

 - Find out how you can participate with Apache community/projects/activities --opportunities open with Apache Camel, Apache HTTP Server, and more! https://helpwanted.apache.org/

 - Are your software solutions Powered by Apache? Download & use our "Powered By" logos http://www.apache.org/foundation/press/kit/#poweredby

= = =

For real-time updates, sign up for Apache-related news by sending mail to announce-subscribe@apache.org and follow @TheASF on Twitter. For a broader spectrum from the Apache community, https://twitter.com/PlanetApache provides an aggregate of Project activities as well as the personal blogs and tweets of select ASF Committers.


Posted at 05:12AM Mar 13, 2020 by Swapnil M Mane in Newsletter  |   | 

Sunday March 08, 2020

The Apache Software Foundation Statement on the COVID-19 Coronavirus Outbreak

As a global organization with contributors on every continent, safeguarding our community is our highest concern, especially during the public health emergency presented with the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.


The World Health Organization and US Centers for Disease Control continue to release updates: we are actively monitoring the situation as part of our commitment to helping protect individuals from contracting or spreading the virus. 


Effective immediately, The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) strongly recommends suspending all travel associated with official ASF business and events through May 2020, after which we will reassess the restriction period. This applies to official Apache Conferences*, including Apache Roadshows in Washington DC (25 March) and Chicago (18-19 May), as well as beneficiaries of the ASF Travel Assistance Committee.


Of course, exceptions need to be considered. We implore those who must travel to review the WHO's Travel Advice https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/travel-advice and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's comprehensive Information for Travel reports at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/index.html 


With email being the ASF's primary method of communication for more than two decades, we do not anticipate significant disruption to ASF operations or to Apache Projects and their communities. Where possible, those organizing in-person assemblies may wish to consider holding virtual events or postponing, as opposed to cancelling.


Many members of our community work remotely. Whilst working from home may not be possible for some, we urge everyone to practice caution and be proactive with frequent hand-washing, using hand sanitizer, covering coughs and sneezes, and handling food safely. We urge those who are at risk or feeling unwell to stay home and take care of themselves. As symptoms can take more than three weeks to appear in those affected, we commend those who encourage their friends, family, and coworkers to take proper precautions.


We will continue to monitor this rapidly changing situation, and endeavor to provide updates as early as possible.


*Please follow the Notice on Apache 2020 Conferences at https://s.apache.org/zgm8m for the latest updates on Apache events.


# # #

Posted at 02:38AM Mar 08, 2020 by Sally in General  |   | 

Friday March 06, 2020

The Apache News Round-up: week ending 6 March 2020

Welcome, March! We've had a great week within the Apache community. Here's what happened:

Success at Apache – the monthly blog series that focuses on the people and processes behind why the ASF "just works".
 - "Google Summer of Code Mentorship --inside the GSoC 2019 Mentor Summit" by Sanyam Goel and Kevin A. McGrail https://s.apache.org/ejj5q   

Apache Month In Review – a summary what the Apache community has been up to in February 2020 https://s.apache.org/Feb2020

ASF Board – management and oversight of the business affairs of the corporation in accordance with the Foundation's bylaws.
 - The Apache Software Foundation Operations Summary: Q3 FY2020 (November 2019 - January 2020) https://s.apache.org/r6s5u
 - Next Board Meeting: 18 March 2020. Board calendar and minutes http://apache.org/foundation/board/calendar.html

ApacheCon™ – the ASF's official global conference series, bringing Tomorrow's Technology Today since 1998.
 - Notice on Apache 2020 Conferences https://s.apache.org/zgm8m

Apache Community Development  – the committee that welcomes new participants to the Apache community and mentors them in "The Apache Way".

 - Beijing, China, joins Indore, India, as the latest Apache Local Community (ALC) Chapter https://s.apache.org/t4m3x
 - About the Apache Local Community program https://s.apache.org/alc

ASF Infrastructure – our distributed team on three continents keeps the ASF's infrastructure running around the clock.
 - 7M+ weekly checks yield uptime at 99.87%. Performance checks across 50 different service components spread over more than 250 machines in data centers around the world. http://www.apache.org/uptime/

Apache Code Snapshot – this week, 824 Apache contributors changed 2,401,358 lines of code over 3,496 commits. Top 5 contributors, in order, are: Andrea Cosentino, Mark Thomas, Claus Ibsen, Paul J. Davis, and Tomaz Muraus.   

Apache Project Announcements – the latest updates by category.

Big Data --
 - Apache CouchDB 3.0.0 released https://couchdb.apache.org/
 - Apache HBase 1.4.13 released https://hbase.apache.org/

Cloud Computing --
 - The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache® BrooklynTM v1.0 https://s.apache.org/ladi7

Databases --
 - Apache Derby 10.15.2.0 released https://db.apache.org/

IoT --
 - Apache PLC4X 0.6.0 released https://plc4x.apache.org/  

Libraries --
 - Apache Log4j 2.13.1 released https://logging.apache.org/

Messaging --
 - Apache Qpid JMS 0.49.0 released https://qpid.apache.org/
 - Apache Curator 4.3.0 released https://curator.apache.org/

Programming Languages --
 - Apache Groovy 2.4.19 released https://groovy.apache.org/

Servers --
 - Apache Traffic Server 8.0.6 and 7.1.9 released https://trafficserver.apache.org/


Did You Know?

 - Did you know that Netflix uses Apache Druid to manage its 1.5 trillion-row data warehouse requirements that include what users see when tapping the Netflix icon or logging in from a browser across platforms? http://druid.apache.org/

 - Did you know that the Apache Airflow community will be at Airflow Summit, 3-5 June in Mountain View? http://airflow.apache.org/

 - Did you know that WIRIS Math and Science uses ApacheMXNet to power MathType for Handwritten Math Recognition? https://mxnet.apache.org/


Apache Community Notices:

 - Apache Month In Review: February 2020 – overview of events that have taken place within the Apache community https://s.apache.org/Feb2020

 - "Trillions and Trillions Served", the documentary on the ASF, is in post-production. Catch the teaser at https://s.apache.org/ASF-Trillions

 - Apache in 2019 - By The Digits https://s.apache.org/Apache2019Digits

 - The Apache Way to Sustainable Open Source Success https://s.apache.org/GhnI

 - ASF Operations Summary: Q2 FY2020 (August - October 2019) https://s.apache.org/2kv2n

 - Celebrating 20 Years Community-led Development "The Apache Way" https://s.apache.org/ASF20thAnniversary

 - ASF Founders look back on 20 Years of the ASF https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/our-founders-look-back-on

 - Foundation Reports and Statements http://www.apache.org/foundation/reports.html

 - ApacheCon: Tomorrow's Technology Today since 1998 http://s.apache.org/ApacheCon

 - ASF Annual Report for FY2019 https://s.apache.org/FY2019AnnualReport

 - The Apache Software Foundation 2018 Vision Statement https://s.apache.org/zqC3

 - Foundation Statement –Apache Is Open. https://s.apache.org/PIRA

 - Pre-registration open for the first Pulsar Summit http://pulsar.apache.org/blog/2019/12/18/Pulsar-summit-cfp/

 - "Success at Apache" focuses on the people and processes behind why the ASF "just works". https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/category/SuccessAtApache

 - Please follow/like/re-tweet the ASF on social media: @TheASF on Twitter (https://twitter.com/TheASF) and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-apache-software-foundation

 - Do friend and follow us on the Apache Community Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/ApacheSoftwareFoundation/ and Twitter account https://twitter.com/ApacheCommunity

 - Find out how you can participate with Apache community/projects/activities --opportunities open with Apache Camel, Apache HTTP Server, and more! https://helpwanted.apache.org/

 - Are your software solutions Powered by Apache? Download & use our "Powered By" logos http://www.apache.org/foundation/press/kit/#poweredby

= = =

For real-time updates, sign up for Apache-related news by sending mail to announce-subscribe@apache.org and follow @TheASF on Twitter. For a broader spectrum from the Apache community, https://twitter.com/PlanetApache provides an aggregate of Project activities as well as the personal blogs and tweets of select ASF Committers.

Posted at 05:06AM Mar 06, 2020 by Swapnil M Mane in Newsletter  |   | 

Thursday March 05, 2020

Notice on Apache 2020 Conferences

In light of the World Health Organization raising the threat level about the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, we have decided, after much consideration, to cancel the following events:

Note that the Apache Roadshow/Seattle, scheduled for 10-12 June 2020, has been postponed.

The safety of our event attendees, speakers, sponsors, and staff is of the utmost importance. We are committed to minimizing our global community’s potential health risk, exposure to border health inspections, and increased travel restrictions.

Event organizers will be in contact with delegates regarding further updates.

= = =

UPDATES --9 March: added Chicago Roadshow to cancellation list; added postponement notice for Seattle Roadshow.

For the latest developments, follow @ApacheCon on Twitter and ASF Events on LinkedIn.

Posted at 07:55PM Mar 05, 2020 by Sally in General  |   | 

Wednesday March 04, 2020

The Apache Software Foundation Operations Summary: November 2019 - January 2020

FOUNDATION OPERATIONS SUMMARY

Third Quarter, Fiscal Year 2020 (November 2019 - January 2020)

"The Foundation's unique approach has created many industry standards and will likely continue to do so for many more years. Apache projects are famous not just for great technology, but for their longevity and vendor-independence."
—Doug Cutting, ASF Member and Chief Architect at Cloudera (ASF Platinum Sponsor)


> Conferences and Events http://apachecon.com/

During this period we held two major Apache events. Q3 was fairly quiet for Conferences. We did not hold any events during this period, but were busy with early planning happening for several upcoming events.

ApacheCon North America 2020 will be held in New Orleans in September https://www.apachecon.com/acna2020/

We will be holding several Apache Roadshows in the coming months:

Sponsorship opportunities and speaking opportunities are available for all of these events.

> Community Development http://community.apache.org/

One of the key themes this quarter was the discussion of how to encourage ASF participation locally by establishing Apache Local Communities (ALC). The ALC comprises local groups of Apache enthusiasts, called an 'ALC Chapter' that will be responsible for organising local Apache related events. To create the necessary oversight for these groups we have agreed a set of governance processes including how they are formed, roles and responsibilities, how events are to be organised and how to dissolve a group if it is no longer active.

We have received the requests to establish the ALC Chapters in Beijing, Warsaw and Budapest and these are currently under consideration. Our existing active ALC Chapter in Indore ran an event on Open Source and ASF Awareness for school students.

We have applied on behalf of the ASF to be a GSoC mentoring organisation for 2020 and are waiting for the response. In preparation we have setup a wiki page to collect GsoC ideas from our Apache project communities.

During January we prepared for participation in FOSDEM as we were once again allocated a booth at the event. Volunteers from many of our projects signed up to spend time on the booth or to make themselves available to talk to attendees. As usual Community Development co-ordinated the booth and managed the giveaways for the event.

As well as ApacheCon and the Apache Roadshows planned for 2020, we are continuing to actively support any third party events that we can.

Despite the holiday season our mailing list traffic has increased slightly this quarter.

> Committers and Contributions http://apache.org/licenses/contributor-agreements.html

Over the past quarter, 1,581 contributors committed 42,338 changes that amount to 14,073,594 lines of code across Apache projects. The top 5 contributors, in order, were: Tilman Hausherr (1,010 commits), Andrea Cosentino (788 commits), Mark Robert Miller (771 commits), Mark Thomas (681 commits), and Jean-Baptiste Onofré (616 commits).

All individuals who are granted write access to the Apache repositories must submit an Individual Contributor License Agreement (ICLA). Corporations that have assigned employees to work on Apache projects as part of an employment agreement may sign a Corporate CLA (CCLA) for contributing intellectual property via the corporation. Individuals or corporations donating a body of existing software or documentation to one of the Apache projects need to execute a formal Software Grant Agreement (SGA) with the ASF.

During Q3 FY2020, the ASF Secretary processed 187 ICLAs, 6 CCLAs, and 6 Software Grants. History of Apache committer growth can be seen at https://projects.apache.org/timelines.html

> Brand Management http://apache.org/foundation/marks/

Operations —the work of the Brand Management team falls broadly into one of four categories:

- providing advice to projects

- granting permission to use our marks

- trademark transfers and registrations

- addressing potential infringements of our marks

The volume of work this quarter has again increased significantly compared to the previous quarter. This has mostly been driven by starting work on a number of draft policies where we are looking to clarify policy around a number of uses of Apache marks.

The topics covered in the advice provided to projects this quarter included setting up an external package registry, podling naming, community managed sites, registration of marks, 'official' social media accounts, assignment of marks, name changes, event sponsorship and linking to external support services.

This quarter has seen requests to use Apache marks for marketing material, events, books, scientifc papers, Websites, t-shirts with nearly all requests being granted, subject to our Trademark Usage Policy. The few requests that are not granted often relate to using a derivtaive of our logos --something we do not permit.

This quarter a number of the event approval discussions resulted in changes to the proposed evenmst dates to avoid clashes with other planned ASF events.

Registrations —the registration of APACHE in the US completed this quarter.

A number of registrations came up for renewal this quarter. We review each renewal as it comes up and, as a result, opted not to renew some of those registrations. The remaining renewals are in now progress.

We also started a small number of new registrations this quarter.

Infringements —potential infringements are brought to our attention from both internal and external sources. The majority of infringements we see are accidental and our project communities are able to resolve these quickly and informally with occasional input from the Brand Management team. A small number of issues take longer to resolve. We made progress on some of these this quarter and hope that that progress will continue next quarter.

We continue to work to resolve the significant infringement mentioned in the last quarterly report. Along side that projects have resolved a number of minor issues during this quarter.

And finally…

The Brand Management team welcomes your comments and suggestions as well as any questions you might have. Please see https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/contact for our contact details.

> Security http://apache.org/security/

We continued to work on handling incoming security issues, keeping projects reminded of their outstanding issues, allocation of CVE names, and other general oversight and advice.

For Q3 we tracked 94 new vulnerability reports across 46 projects. (Q3 last year for comparison was 88 reports). Those reports led to 37 published CVE vulnerabilities.

We published metrics for the whole of 2019 including discussion of high severity issues in a report https://s.apache.org/security2019 


> Privacy http://apache.org/foundation/policies/privacy.html

The board has rekindled the privacy effort. Currently we're working on three parallel tracks; developing a general policy from which we can derive day to day implementations and operating procedures, capturing/collecting the areas where we know we've historically dropped balls while also dealing with the day to day operational aspects (such as requests). The complexity is that we have on the one hand the purpose of the Apache Software Foundation; allowing a community to develop code for the common good. With all that that entails (such as having healthy, transparent and trust in the community). And on the other hands we have the rights and worries of both those in our community and our end users; whose privacy we would like to protect as well as we can. And the two can collide; e.g. for a software grant or things having to do with finance; we need to keep a fair amount of personally identifiable information on file. But at the same time - we want to protect the privacy of our community. Yet for the health of our community - a certain level of transparency is needed; as do some governance processes (e.g. those where developers approve a release as an official release of the foundation). For next two quarters the focus will likely shift to developing SoP's for day to day implementation (and automation) & hunting down where we have 'needless' data.


> Infrastructure http://apache.org/dev/infrastructure.html

This quarter has been relatively quiet for the Infrastructure team, given the holidays and New Year.

Our biggest highlight was hiring Andrew Wetmore as a Technical Writer and Editor, to bring his experience to our set of web pages, wiki content, and assorted documentation. For twenty years, the Foundation has organically written a large number of words. Andrew will corral this set of content into a coherent whole, with two goals in mind: to assist our development community with information about Infrastructure and its services, and to provide better guidance to users and new community members.

Continuing with a reflection of our history, we have decades of email archives. These have been provided on mail-archives.apache.org to the public. This quarter, we finally announced the decommission of our old archive system, in favor of the lists.apache.org service. The archive will be turned off some time during the next quarter, with redirects left in place to handle the myriad of links established over time.

For many years, the Foundation has been investing in CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Development). Primarily through our Jenkins installation, but also through integrations with third-party services. We have begun testing new Jenkins-based tooling to improve our management of clusters of nodes for assignment/use by our projects.

Our hope is this will help us continue to scale with the increasing demands of the Apache communities.

Fundraising is pleased to report another successful quarter of smooth operations. Renewals and business-as-usual work has been executed as planned. We've had a "typical" flow of new Sponsors and returning Sponsors with a few exciting Sponsor "upgrades" this quarter. This quarter we also completed our first targeted cash donation to an Apache project (Cordova).

We're pleased to also report further participation and "cross department" collaboration within The ASF. Fundraising support for Events has remained a focus this quarter as we ramp up for the several 2020 events. Additional focus is being placed on documentation, process, repeatability, and ensuring our Event Sponsors have a smooth experience all around. TAC and Fundraising are also collaborating more to encourage Event participation via Targeted Sponsorships -- more to come!

Process-wise, we continue improving the internals of the Fundraising mechanics to ensure smooth operation as well as improved documentation. We've recently adopted an improved procedure for meeting minutes and action items to further ensure nothing falls through the cracks.

Our planned outreach activities are all on track for Sponsors and we remain responsive to changes in organizational structures as our contacts enter and depart roles. We enjoyed meeting several of our Sponsors at COSCon in Shanghai in early November. Finally, we also updated our link policy for the "thanks page" to comply with popular webmaster recommendations by adding rel="sponsored" tags to new links and upon Sponsor renewals.

We are delighted to share the results of a very successful individual giving campaign that ran from late November through the end of calendar year 2019. The proceeds of the campaign were $14,240 in total which represents a 222% increase from previous years! The donations were comprised of 112 individual donations and 3 corporate gifts. We truly felt the love as some donations included heartfelt notes of thanks and encouragement for our mission.

Thank you to all our Sponsors --

  • PLATINUM: Amazon Web Services, Cloudera, Comcast, Facebook, Google, LeaseWeb, Microsoft, Pineapple Fund, Verizon Media, Tencent
  • GOLD: Anonymous, ARM, Bloomberg, Handshake, Huawei, IBM, Indeed, Union Investment, Workday
  • SILVER: Aetna, Alibaba Cloud Computing, Baidu, Budget Direct, Capital One, Cerner, Inspur, ODPi, Private Internet Access, Red Hat, Target
  • BRONZE: Airport Rentals, The Blog Starter, Bookmakers, Cash Store, Bestecasinobonussen.nl, CarGurus, Casino2k, Cloudsoft, The Economic Secretariat, Emerio, Footprints Recruiting, Gundry MD, HostChecka.com, Host Advice, HostingAdvice.com, Journal Review, LeoVegas Indian Online Casino, Mutuo Kredit AG, Online Holland Casino, ProPrivacy, PureVPN, RX-M, SCAMS.info, Site Builder Report, Start a Blog by Ryan Robinson, Talend, The Best VPN, Top10VPN, Twitter, Web Hosting Secret Revealed, Xplenty
  • TARGETED PLATINUM: CloudBees, DLA Piper, JetBrains, Microsoft, OSU Open Source Labs, Sonatype, Verizon Media
  • TARGETED GOLD: Atlassian, The CrytpoFund, Datadog, PhoenixNAP, Quenda
  • TARGETED SILVER: Amazon Web Services, HotWax Systems, Rackspace
  • TARGETED BRONZE: Bintray, Education Networks of America, Google, Hopsie, No-IP, PagerDuty, Peregrine Computer Consultants Corporation, Sonic.net, SURFnet, Virtru

To sponsor The Apache Software Foundation, visit http://apache.org/foundation/sponsorship.html . To make a one-time or monthly recurring donation, please visit https://donate.apache.org/

= = =

Report prepared by Sally Khudairi, Vice President Marketing & Publicity, with contributions by Rich Bowen, Vice President Conferences; Mark Cox, Vice President Security; Sharan Foga, Vice President Community Development; Myrle Krantz, Treasurer; David Nalley, Vice President Infrastructure; Tom Pappas, Vice President Finance; Daniel Ruggeri, Vice President Fundraising; Greg Stein, ASF Infrastructure Administrator; Mark Thomas, Vice President Brand Management; and Dirk-Willem van Gulik, Vice President Data Privacy.

For more information, subscribe to the announce@apache.org mailing list and visit http://www.apache.org/, the ASF Blog at http://blogs.apache.org/, the @TheASF on Twitter, and https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-apache-software-foundation.

(c) The Apache Software Foundation 2020.

# # #

Posted at 08:36PM Mar 04, 2020 by Sally in General  |   | 

Success at Apache: Google Summer of Code Mentorship --inside the GSoC 2019 Mentor Summit

by Sanyam Goel & Kevin A. McGrail

Sanyam first came to the ASF as a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) student in 2017; since then he has become a committer and contributor to Apache Fineract and active participant with Apache community initiatives. Sanyam, along with Kevin (a.k.a. “KAM”), a long-time  ASF Member involved with the Apache Incubator and SpamAssassin projects, were selected to represent the Apache Software Foundation at GSoC’s 2019 Mentor Summit.

Google Summer of Code is a global program focused on introducing students to open source software development. Students work on a 3 month programming project with an open source organization during their break from university.


Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together 15,000+ student participants and 25,000+ mentors from over 118 countries worldwide. Google Summer of Code has produced 36,000,000+ lines of code for 686 open source organizations.


As a part of Google Summer of Code, student participants are paired with a mentor from the participating organizations, gaining exposure to real-world software development and techniques. Students have the opportunity to spend the break between their school semesters earning a stipend while working in areas related to their interests.


About the ASF and GSOoC: “The Apache Software Foundation has been a GSoC mentoring organization every year since the program’s inception. As a mentoring organization, the ASF is able to draw attention and new talent to many of its projects; Apache projects benefit from contributions and galvanize new community members by mentoring students; and students have an invaluable opportunity to gain experience by working directly with the individuals behind Apache projects. This, in turn, enriches the Apache community as a whole, and furthers the ASF’s mission of providing software for the public good.”


At the ASF, GSoC is overseen by Apache Community Development (“ComDev”), the committee that welcomes new participants to the Apache community and mentors them in “The Apache Way”. Former ComDev VP and Google Summer of Code administrator Ulrich Stärk, along with Apache OpenMeetings VP and GSoC mentor, Maxim Solodovnik, helped lead the ASF’s participation in GSoC this year, with the support of numerous Apache community members.


The ASF provides an established framework for intellectual property and financial contributions that simultaneously limits contributors potential legal exposure. Through a collaborative and meritocratic development process known as “The Apache Way”, Apache projects deliver enterprise-grade, freely available software products that attract large communities of users. The pragmatic Apache License makes it easy for all users, commercial and individual, to deploy Apache products.


As we gear up for Google Summer of Code 2020, we wanted to take a moment and share some of the experiences from last year’s GSOC!


In Google Summer of Code 2019, 23 students were selected by a careful analysis and ranking.  17 students successfully completed their Google Summer of Code projects with the support of 45 mentors spread across dozens of Apache projects that include Allura, AsterixDB, Beam, Camel, Fineract, Gora, Kudu, Mnemonic, Nemo (Incubating), OODT, SpamAssassin, and more.


Quick Report on the GSoC 2019 Numbers for Apache.org:

Accepted projects: 23

1st evaluation: 22 passed, 1 failed

2nd evaluation: 17 passed, 5 failed

3rd evaluation: all passed


Total Apache Mentors: 45


Sanyam and KAM were lucky enough to be selected as the delegates of the Apache Software Foundation for the GSoC Mentor Summit & the 15th GSoC anniversary.


On 10th March 2019 we got our invitations from Google: “You have been invited to be a Mentor for The Apache Software Foundation in Google Summer of Code 2019”.


With this invitation, there comes a huge pool of responsibilities to mentor students.  For Sanyam, it was his first time to provide mentorship at such a great level and to drive the complete project with the college student.


Sanyam: “By providing the complete guidance throughout the GSoC Period at the same time, though I had provided mentorship to at the university level to juniors in college. I also learned to manage the project and how to play the role of project lead to fulfill the project with the timelines with the student.


I was really excited to meet Google Open Source team in person and Kevin A. Mc Grail (KAM) along with 332 mentors from 162 organizations and 42 countries to share their ideas about open source and to discuss their experience of GSoC 2019. I would like to thank Ulrich Stärk and Maxim Solodovnik for serving as an organization admin for the ASF community.”


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Day 1: Thursday | Munich, Germany - Marriott München


Day 1 of the summit is started by checkin into the Marriott Hotel, where we met the Google OPSO team just near the entrance and reception of the hotel.

Google OPSO team was very welcoming and welcomed every mentor by providing a Goodie bag along with a mouth watering sweet.


At the reception, we met Mario Behling from FOSSASIA community along with mentors from various organisations like Mifos Initiative, SCoRE Labs and DBpedia where we talked about the pocket science project. 

Then we all headed to lunch, where we met dove into the discussions about the OSS and how umbrella organisation manages the student applications to select the students for Google Summer of Code.


GSoC Mentor Summit started with the opening reception dinner along with opening notes from the Google OPSO team which lead to a small game named as person scavenger hunt which had a sole purpose to connect and meet the mentors from different organisations and to interact with them to discuss more about open source with some drinks and food.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Day 2: Friday | Munich, Germany - Fun Day (City Scavenger hunt / Castle Tour)

On the celebration of the 15th anniversary of GSoC, Google allocated an extra day this year at the mentor summit for fun activities like Castle tour and City Scavenger hunt.


Sanyam participated in the Scavenger hunt where some group of mentors had to explore the city on their own to find the clues and the top 2 teams got the prize. Sanyam was lucky enough to be with the winners team. And some mentors like KAM went for a really nice castle tour thanks to our host, Google.


The day ended up with informal conversations among the mentors over dinner and games in the ballroom of the Marriott.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Day 3: Saturday | Munich, Germany - Unconferences (Yay!!)

Day 3 was one of the most exciting days at the event. We had a lot of sessions organized by different organisations in the form of an unconference, which is “a loosely structured conference emphasizing the informal exchange of information and ideas between participants, rather than following a conventionally structured programme of events.”

Mentors organized the unconference sessions on Saturday and Sunday. The unconference slots were planned with two rounds of lightning talks but ended with three rounds of lightning talks :-). A lightning talk is a platform for organisations to present on the work of their GSoC 2019 and GCI 2018 for 3 minutes. KAM also presented a lightning talk for ASF and Apache SpamAssassin on Saturday morning.

After lunch, all the mentors and the Google OPSO team gathered in a lawn just outside the Marriott for a group photograph.

[“GSoC 2019 Mentors Photo”]


We were involved in various unconferences sessions like:

How to get more Women interested in FOSS

The Fundraising Session (Presented by Kevin A. McGrail)

Source code preservation

Google Season of Docs (GSoD)

Intro to licenses and why we need them


After attending all the talks, we also discussed how to retain students after the completion of the GSoC period.


After the last lightning talk we all managed to spend some more time together to enjoy dinner, playing foosball, making funny poses on the photo booth along with enjoying the famous chocolate room (Oh, did we forget to mention about the famous chocolate table? This year, Google managed to have a complete room of chocolates!) where mentors across the globe shared the local country chocolates with each other!


Day 4: Sunday | Munich, Germany - Final day  :( 

Unfortunately, it was the last day of the mentor summit. The day started with continuation of lightning talks where Sanyam and KAM almost managed to attend all the lightning talks and got to know more about the other GSoC organisations and their amazing projects from GSoC 2019.


We attended some more unconference sessions on the following topics

GCI Info & Feedback with Google

GSoC Feedback session

Breaking the barrier for the newcomers

Interviews at Silicon Valley


Then we all headed for the final lunch of the summit.  By this point, most of us knew each other and some are planning to extend the trip by visiting some other cities, or some are planning to return back to their home countries. We all gathered for the closing session and all mentors had made a great network of cool people in the open source community!


We have also met a lot of mentors who were previously GSoC students. We had a lot of discussions about the experiences of being a student as well as a mentor, what motivated them to become a mentor and how they're contributing to their community.


Left to Right: Joey Schlichting, Sanyam Goel & Kevin A. McGrail


Overall, it was one of the lifetime experiences for every representative. The trip was full of memories and we got to learn so much, we also made new and special friends throughout the summit.


The GSoC Mentor Summit-2019 was a wonderful experience and we would like to thank the Google, The Apache Software Foundation, and once again, the ASF GSoC Organisation Admins, Ulrich Stärk and Maxim Solodovnik and the event hosts from the Google Open Source Team.


GSoC 2020 is underway now and we are just gathering project ideas and mentors.  Students looking to get involved, please see http://community.apache.org/gsoc.html


Sanyam Goel started his journey with ASF by participating in GSoC 2017 as a student and continued contributing actively to OSS, currently serving as a committer of Apache Fineract. He also participated as a mentor in Google Code In and Outreachy programs for Mifos Initiative and DIAL community and always keen to spread the word about OSS to create an impact around the globe and focus on reducing the barriers for newcomers into OSS.

Kevin A. McGrail, better known as KAM, is a VP emeritus of the Apache SpamAssassin project where he has battled spammers for years.  In addition to helping the SpamAssassin project, he has served as in the office of treasurer and fundraising for the Apache Software Foundation.  He is also a member of the Apache Incubator project where he mentors new projects at the ASF including echarts, IoTDB & brpc. In his $dayjob, he works at InfraShield.com doing cybersecurity for critical infrastructure.

= = =

"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 12:42AM Mar 04, 2020 by Sally in SuccessAtApache  |   | 

Tuesday March 03, 2020

The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache® Brooklyn(TM) v1.0

Advanced Open Source framework for modelling, monitoring, and managing applications used by global systems integrators, Cloud software and service providers, and major enterprises across financial services, supply chain management, and more.

Wakefield, MA —3 March 2020— The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, today announced Apache® BrooklynTM v1.0, the latest version of the Open Source framework for modelling, monitoring, and managing applications.

"I am excited to see the 1.0 release of Apache Brooklyn," said Geoff Macartney, Vice President of Apache Brooklyn. "This reflects the maturity and stability that Brooklyn has reached after nearly five years as a Top-Level Apache project."

Apache Brooklyn provides a single tool that includes a REST API and GUI for:

  • managing provisioning and application deployment;
  • monitoring an application’s health and metrics;
  • understanding the dependencies between components; and 
  • applying complex policies to manage the application.

Apache Brooklyn uses declarative YAML blueprints to describe an application and all its components. Blueprints can be treated as an integral part of the application, and as modular components that can be composed and reused in many ways. Brooklyn blueprints incorporate policies that actively manage a deployed application by reacting to sensor data such as application health or load, and take actions such as replacing nodes or growing a cluster. Brooklyn’s design is influenced by Autonomic computing and promise theory and implements the OASIS CAMP and TOSCA standards.

Apache Brooklyn 1.0 highlights include:

  • Support for public and private clouds, available out-of-the-box thanks to integrated Apache jclouds, as well as private infrastructure
  • A modern, user-friendly, web-based UI including the drag-and-drop Blueprint Composer
  • REST API and CLI tools, suitable for power users, automation and scripting
  • A stable blueprint language and API
  • “Batteries included” entities and policies covering clusters, auto-scaling, replacing unhealthy components, and more

"Apache Brooklyn has been in use for some time in production environments," said Richard Downer, Apache Brooklyn 1.0 release manager. "I’m delighted we can now announce our 1.0 release. Everyone should feel confident building on and deploying Apache Brooklyn 1.0 and know that the Brooklyn Project Management Committee has prioritised the long-term stability of Brooklyn."

Apache Brooklyn is in use by global systems integrators, providers of Cloud software and services, as well as mission-critical applications for major enterprises in financial services, supply chain management, and more.

"We are delighted to see Apache Brooklyn reach this milestone," said David Cairns, CTO for innovation at Fujitsu Digital Technology Services. "Apache Brooklyn powers Fujitsu AIOps solutions with policy-based autonomics to detect service deterioration or outage and can automatically re-locate Cloud applications and services from one cloud provider to another to elevate resilience and uptime." 

"Reaching v1.0 reflects the maturity of Apache Brooklyn and we appreciate the community’s effort," said Ross Gray, CEO at Cloudsoft. "Cloudsoft AMP is built on Apache Brooklyn and helps customers eliminate manual processes, cut effort by 75%, and reduce infrastructure spend by as much as 66%."

Apache Brooklyn blueprints for many well-known applications and tools, including ElasticSearch, clustered MySQL, and DNS management, as well as Apache projects such as Cassandra, CouchDB, Kafka, Solr, Storm, ZooKeeper and more, are all freely available under the Apache License v2. The Apache Brooklyn community warmly welcomes new code, testing, blueprints, documentation, presentations, and other contributions.

"Brooklyn is a powerful tool for unified modelling, deployment and lifetime management of applications," added Macartney. "This latest release is a great opportunity for a wider audience to try Brooklyn for themselves and find out how it can help them create and manage their applications, be it in the Cloud, on-premise, or in a hybrid environment. We look forward to growing our community as people discover all that Brooklyn can do."

Availability and Oversight
Apache Brooklyn software is released under the Apache License v2.0 and is overseen by a self-selected team of active contributors to the project. A Project Management Committee (PMC) guides the Project's day-to-day operations, including community development and product releases. For downloads, documentation, and ways to become involved with Apache Brooklyn, visit https://brooklyn.apache.org/ and https://twitter.com/ApacheBrooklyn

About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)
Established in 1999, The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is the world’s largest Open Source foundation, stewarding 200M+ lines of code and providing more than $20B+ worth of software to the public at 100% no cost. The ASF’s all-volunteer community grew from 21 original founders overseeing the Apache HTTP Server to 765 individual Members and 206 Project Management Committees who successfully lead 350+ Apache projects and initiatives in collaboration with 7,600 Committers through the ASF’s meritocratic process known as "The Apache Way". Apache software is integral to nearly every end user computing device, from laptops to tablets to mobile devices across enterprises and mission-critical applications. Apache projects power most of the Internet, manage exabytes of data, execute teraflops of operations, and store billions of objects in virtually every industry. The commercially-friendly and permissive Apache License v2 has become an industry standard within the Open Source world, helping launch billion dollar corporations and benefiting countless users worldwide. The ASF is a US 501(c)(3) not-for-profit charitable organization funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors including Aetna, Alibaba Cloud Computing, Anonymous, ARM, Baidu, Bloomberg, Budget Direct, Capital One, CarGurus, Cerner, Cloudera, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Handshake, Huawei, IBM, Indeed, Inspur, Leaseweb, Microsoft, ODPi, Pineapple Fund, Pivotal, Private Internet Access, Red Hat, Target, Tencent, Union Investment, Workday, and Verizon Media. For more information, visit http://apache.org/ and https://twitter.com/TheASF

© The Apache Software Foundation. "Apache", "Brooklyn", "Apache Brooklyn", "Cassandra", "Apache Cassandra", "CouchDB", "Apache CouchDB", "jclouds", "Apache jclouds", "Kafka", "Apache Kafka", "Solr", “Apache Solr", "Storm", “Apache Storm", "ZooKeeper", and "Apache ZooKeeper" are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries. All other brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

# # #

Posted at 11:00AM Mar 03, 2020 by Sally in General  |   | 

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