General guidelines for participating Apache software communities.

1. The Apache Way
Ａug. 2017
Evans Ye

2. Reference
The Apache Way
Alan Gates
DataWorks Summit 2017 San Jose
https://dataworkssummit.com/san-jose-2017/sessions/the-apache-way

3. Apache Software Foundation
• Non-profit foundation that manages open source projects
• Most of people are volunteers, a few paid positions (such as infra)
• About 180 top level projects (TLPs)
• EX: httpd, Tomcat, Spark, Flink, HBase, Mesos, Bigtop
• New projects started from Incubator
• EX: Hivemall, Impala, PredictionIO, MXNet
• Some are new projects, some already have mature code base
• Mentors train the project in the Apache Way

4. Spirits
• Community over code
• Apache does not write great software, Apache build communities that write great
software
• No Corporate Affiliations
• Some volunteers, some paid by employers to do open source
• Everyone works as individuals, not an employee of a company
• Companies have no control on the project
• Paid workers work on features, bugs
• Many company sponsor Apache, or back projects

5. Roles
• Users
• Download, use the software; ask, discuss questions on the user mailing list
• Contributors
• NOT ONLY developers
• Contributing tests and doc, reporting bugs, answering questions on mailing list,
organizing meetups, workshops, user groups, anything that helps!
• Committers
• Have write permission to project codebase
• Decide whether your code gets committed or not.

6. Roles
• Project Management Committee (PMC)
• Vote for new committers and PMC members
• Vote for releases
• access to private mailing list
• Reports regularly to the board
• Assures the project is operating in the "Apache Way"

7. Roles
• Apache Members
• Shareholders, caretakers of the foundation
• access to members mailing list
• access to all private mailing list
• New members nominated by current members every year
• Apache Board
• Governs Apache, elected every year

8. Project Hierarchy
PMC chair
PMC
Committer
contributor
user

9. ASF Hierarchy
PMC chair
PMC
Committer
contributor
user
PMC chair
PMC
Committer
contributor
user
PMC chair
PMC
Committer
contributor
user
Apache Member
Board

10. Meritocracy
• Contributors who continuously making quality contributions are voted in as
committers by the PMC
• Committers who continue to contribute and show the ability to guide the
project are voted in as PMC member by the PMC
• Committers and PMC members who continuously contribute across
projects are voted in as Apache members by other member
• Merit does not expire
• Merit does not transfer
• Bigtop PMC does not get me on Hadoop PMC

11. How it Works
•Mailing list
•Enables volunteers in different time zone to work together
•Project specific: users, dev, private@XXX.apache.org
•Non-list discussions need to be reported back on list
•If it didn’t happen on-list, it didn’t happen
•Things can be public, must be public
•Can be private: personal, credentials(AWS, dockerhub), security, legal issues,
nominations
•Lists achieved on the internet

12. How it Works
• JIRA
• Track issues, bugs development progress, submit patches
• Discuss the bug, the problem, review the design, the patch
(Some moved to github for code review)
• Release
• Apache officially only release source code
• Some project provide binary convenience artifacts
• Release earlier, release often

13. Votes
• Decisions are reached by consensus, not majority votes
• Votes to formalize decisions
• +1, agree
• +0, no opinions
• -1, I disagree, because...
• All votes are equal
• Different scenarios require different
consensuses

14. Votes
• Decisions are reached by consensus, not majority votes
• Votes to formalize decisions
• +1, agree
• +0, no opinions
• -1, I disagree, because...
• All votes are equal
• Different scenarios require different
consensuses
Decision Who Votes? Consensus Min Votes
Add
committer
or PMC
PMC Unanimous 3
Release PMC Majority 3
Review of
patch
committers Unanimous 0 or 1

15. Why contribute to Apache?
•As a company:
•Maintain good quality and long term availability of business critical foundation software
•Build company brand
•talent acquisition
•As individuals:
•Learn from committers, know great people
•Earn reputation
•Talk on international conferences
•Do something good for the society

16. How do I trade-off between paid
work and making contributions?

17. No, you don't have to
• Still, get your jobs done decently
• Make contributions 8 to10
• Do you really need to spend time on these?
FB, news, movies, ptt, etc
• No you don't because you can find your joy through contributions
• It's not easy. That's why you're different

18. 追求卓越
成功⾃自然伴隨⽽而來來