[this interview is available online at https://s.apache.org/InsideInfra-Andrew ]
The "Inside Infra" series with members of the ASF Infrastructure team continues
with Part I of the interview with Andrew Wetmore, who shares his experience
with Sally Khudairi, ASF VP Marketing & Publicity.
- - -
"...I really had a distant but benevolent appreciation of Apache until I
started to get more and more involved with Royale and began to understand from
that angle all the things that the Foundation does to support these little
projects that could not survive without it. Of course, now that I've become
part of the Infrastructure team, I'm awestruck by the amount of work that the
team does to support all these little projects, so they can do their thing."
- - -
- What is your name and how is it pronounced?
I'm An-drew Wet-more. The "Wetmore" is like a rainy day, very easy to pronounce.
- When and how did you get involved with the ASF?
I was a Flex and ColdFusion developer. When Flex came to end-of-support with
Adobe and they passed it over to Apache, I followed along. I wasn't an active
committer: I was a participant in the Apache Flex project and contributing in
my little ways here and there. Then when the Apache Royale project split off
Apache Flex, I went there, but I was not an active, not a heavily significant
contributor. That is, I was helping with documentation, a bit of testing, a bit
of organizing and helping. I was truly surprised when I was invited to become a
Committer. Then at some point, somebody noted on the Apache Royale list that
the Apache Software Foundation Infrastructure Team was looking for a
documentation person. I thought, "Well, that's interesting. Maybe I would be
able to contribute to that."
I followed that up. I wrote to (ASF Infrastructure Administrator) Greg Stein
and introduced myself and said, "Oh, I'd be interested if this is something
that's happening." Then for one reason and another, nothing happened for quite
a long time. That was fine. He told me nothing was going to happen for a while.
He was migrating some monstrous mountain of something. Then when that long time
was up, I pinged him again and said, "I'm still around if that's an interesting
possibility," and we got talking. He did that wonderful interviewer thing of
saying, "Well, if you were going to hire someone for this sort of a job, that
has this heading, what sort of job description would you write?"
He made me write the job description. I thought, "this is cute: I'm happy to
help. I don't know what person not me is going to get this job, but I'm happy
to write what I think is a good job description for this thing." Truly, I
really expected this to go out and a whole bunch of people to apply for it and
that I would get a participation trophy. I was very pleased when I was invited
to join the team.
- … You got the real trophy.
Yes, I did.
- You got involved when Flex came to Apache, so that goes back to 2011, you've
been with the Foundation for nine years or so?
I was aware and downloading builds as soon as there were builds to download and
participating. I was still building my own Flex stuff, but I don't think I was
really contributing significantly until around maybe 2015. Then I didn't become
a Committer until 2018.
- The other things you were doing prior to Infra were limited to Apache Flex
and then onto Royale?
Yeah, I had a glancing awareness of Apache. Without even thinking about it, of
course, I was using Apache tools like Apache Tomcat packages, but I really had
a distant but benevolent appreciation of Apache until I started to get more and
more involved with Royale and began to understand from that angle all the
things that the Foundation does to support these little projects that could not
survive without it. Of course, now that I've become part of the Infrastructure
team, I'm awestruck by the amount of work that the team does to support all
these little projects, so they can do their thing.
- It's interesting with Apache projects because they're mostly ingredient
brands versus a customer-facing final product. Of course we do have those too,
but the majority of them power something else. A lot of times people aren't
aware until they're in it: then they’re like, "Oh, wow, Apache is everywhere."
Well, I keep trying to improve myself and I go and choose a product project at
random and read its homepage and its "about our product" thing and see how far
I can get before I've hit five things that I don't understand at all. I don't
even understand what I would do with the thing that I do understand which is
not a knock on those projects. It's what you just said, they're not
end-user-facing. I, as a Flex developer, was a Flex developer. I was using Flex
and now Royale to build other things, not getting in with the toolkit and
adjusting and tweaking Flex or Royale.
- Right, like a commercial product. Explain your role within the Infra team
