Success at Apache: The Apache Way for Executives

[Sally Khudairi]

[this post is available online at https://s.apache.org/2Wg8 ]

by Alex Karasulu

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

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

Life is hard when you're stupid

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

Learning while on the job

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

The Apache Way makes life easier

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

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

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

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

Inner Source is the Apache Way

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

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

[ANNOUNCEMENT] HttpComponents Client 4.5.6 GA Released

[Oleg Kalnichevski]

The Apache HttpComponents project is pleased to announce 4.5.6 GA
release of HttpComponents HttpClient.

This is a maintenance release that adds Automatic-Module-Name to the
manifest for compatibility with Java 9 Platform Module System and fixes
a number of issues discovered since 4.5.5

Download - 
Release notes -

HttpComponents site - 

About HttpComponents HttpClient

The Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is perhaps the most significant
protocol used on the Internet today. Web services, network-enabled
appliances and the growth of network computing continue to expand the
role of the HTTP protocol beyond user-driven web browsers, while
increasing the number of applications that require HTTP support.

Although the java.net package provides basic functionality for
accessing resources via HTTP, it doesn't provide the full flexibility
or functionality needed by many applications. HttpClient seeks to fill
this void by providing an efficient, up-to-date, and feature-rich
package implementing the client side of the most recent HTTP standards
and recommendations.

Designed for extension while providing robust support for the base HTTP
protocol, HttpClient may be of interest to anyone building HTTP-aware
client applications such as web browsers, web service clients, or
systems that leverage or extend the HTTP protocol for distributed
communication.

[ANN] Apache Syncope 2.1.0

[Francesco Chicchiriccò]

The Apache Syncope team is pleased to announce the release of Syncope 2.1.0.

Apache Syncope is an Open Source system for managing digital identities 
in enterprise environments, implemented in Java EE technology .


The release will be available within 24h from:
http://syncope.apache.org/downloads.html

Read the full change log available here:
https://s.apache.org/syncope210

We welcome your help and feedback. For more information on how to report 
problems, and to get involved, visit the project website at


http://syncope.apache.org/

The Apache Syncope Team

The Apache® Software Foundation Announces Annual Report for 2018 Fiscal Year

[Sally Khudairi]

[this announcement is available online at https://s.apache.org/VVyr ]

World's largest Open Source foundation's 300+ freely-available, 
enterprise-grade Apache projects power some of the most visible and widely used 
applications in computing today.

Wakefield, MA —9 July 2018— The Apache® Software Foundation (ASF), the 
all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source 
projects and initiatives, announced today the availability of the annual report 
for its 2018 fiscal year, which ended 30 April 2018. 

Established in 1999, the world's largest Open Source foundation’s 300+ 
freely-available, enterprise-grade projects serve as the backbone for some of 
the most visible and widely used applications in computing today. Through the 
ASF's meritocratic process known as "The Apache Way," more than 730 individual 
volunteer Members and 6,700 code Committers across six continents successfully 
collaborate on innovations 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 other categories. 

Highlights include:

1. Published ASF 5-year strategic plan https://www.apache.org/board/plan.html ;
2. Established extended budget to map against strategic plan;
3. Completed and passed first-ever financial audit: unqualified;
4. Profit for FY2017-2018: $548,630;
5. Fundraising yielded a positive net income and raised 150% of goals;
6. Received Bitcoin donation from Pineapple Fund valued at $1M;
7. Launched ASF Targeted Sponsorship program;
8. Total of 8 Platinum Sponsors, 9 Gold Sponsors, 8 Silver Sponsors, 14 Bronze 
Sponsors, and 4 Platinum Targeted Sponsors, 5 Gold Targeted Sponsors, 3 Silver 
Targeted Sponsors, and 11 Bronze Targeted Sponsors;
9. 51 new individual ASF Members elected, bringing the total to 731;
10. Exceeded 6,700 code Committers;
11. 194 Top-Level communities overseeing 319 Apache projects and sub-projects;
12. 16 newly-graduated Top-Level Projects from the Apache Incubator;
13. 54 projects currently undergoing development in the Apache Incubator; 3 
were retired;
14. Top 5 Apache project categories: Libraries, Big Data, Network-Server, XML, 
and Web Frameworks;
15. Top 5 project language distribution: Java, C, Python, C++, and JavaScript;
16. 35M page views per week across apache.org;
17. ~9M source code downloads served from Apache mirrors on a yearly basis 
(excluding convenience binaries);
18. Web requests received from every Internet-connected country on the planet;
19. 3,280 Committers changed 71,186,324 lines of code over 222,684 commits;
20. ASF project contributors have added $624,946,835 worth of code;
21. Highest code contribution value by Apache Mynewt: $61,769,063 worth of code;
22. Top 5 Apache repositories by size: OpenOffice, NetBeans, Flex, Hadoop, and 
Trafodion;
23. Top 5 Apache repositories by commits: Hadoop, Ambari, Camel, Ignite, and 
Beam;
24. 21,772 authors sent 1,617,547 emails on 642,005 topics across 1,131 mailing 
lists
25. Top 5 Apache developer email lists: Ignite, Kafka, Tomcat, Beam, and James;
26. Top 5 Apache user email lists: Lucene/Solr, Ignite, Flink, Kafka, and 
Cassandra;
27. 23rd anniversary of the Apache HTTP Server (19 years under the ASF 
umbrella);
28. 942 Individual Contributor License Agreements (CLAs) signed;
29. 41 Corporate Contributor License Agreements signed;
30. 22 Software Grant Agreements signed;
31. Apache Infrastructure services running 24x7x365 at near 100% uptime on an 
annual budget of less than US$5,000 per project;
32. Expanded "GitBox" service launched to allow communities to host their 
read/write Git repositories on GitHub;
33. Improved Mirror performance, build systems, and redeployment of LDAP 
account system;
34. Migrated mail archive services to the cloud, consolidated domains, and 
enhanced/refined  monitoring;
35. ASF serves as a mentoring organization in Google Summer of Code for 13th 
consecutive year;

The full report is available online at https://s.apache.org/FY2018AnnualReport 

About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)
Established in 1999, the all-volunteer Foundation oversees more than 350 
leading Open Source projects, including Apache HTTP Server --the world's most 
popular Web server software. Through the ASF's meritocratic process known as 
"The Apache Way," more than 730 individual Members and 6,600 Committers across 
six continents successfully collaborate to develop freely available 
enterprise-grade software, benefiting millions of users worldwide: thousands of 
software solutions are distributed under the Apache License; and the community 
actively participates in ASF mailing lists, mentoring initiatives, and 
ApacheCon, the Foundation's official user conference, trainings, and expo. The 
ASF is a US 501(c)(3) charitable organization, funded by individual donations 
and corporate sponsors including Aetna, Anonymous, ARM, Bloomberg, Budget 
Direct,