Reader

We’re issuing the last Plus One Newsletter of the 2024 calendar year a bit early in hopes that we are all able to slow down and take some time away from work to be with family and friends this holiday season. We look forward to sharing more updates while welcoming a new year with the ASF community.

And don’t forget, if you have an item you’d like to have included, reach out to [email protected]. You can sign up via the box below to get Plus One sent directly to your inbox!

Community

CISA Tabletop Exercise Tests Open Source Security Response Procedures

Apache CloudStack Project Spotlight

The Changing Tech Landscape: Keynotes at Community Over Code Emphasize Open Source’s Vital Role

The #asf-writers Slack channel is a meeting place for ASF folks whose main contribution is writing — documentation, presentations, marketing materials, community development guides, and more. Drop by and join the conversation.

Voice of Apache

[Watch] Unomi – Serge Huber

[Watch] CloudStack – Ivet Petrova

[Watch] Kanchana Welagedara – 20 years at Apache

Foundation News

ASF Member to Speak at German Bundestag’s Committee on Digital Affairs Hearing on Open Source

ICYMI: The ASF announced Ruth Suehle as its new President last month. We extend our deepest gratitude to outgoing President David Nalley, who served with distinction for more than a decade as a valued volunteer while being employed by Amazon Web Services. You can read the full announcement on Apache.org.

Ruth offered some of her initial thoughts upon accepting the role as ASF President, which you can read on the Apache.org blog.

From the ASF President

I hope you’re enjoying this new Plus One Newsletter as a way of keeping you informed about what’s going on. The ASF has grown into quite a large foundation, and it’s hard for any of us to know about all of the great stuff going on.

In fact, this year marked the 25th anniversary of the foundation, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what keeps us strong, relevant, and able to continue providing software for the public good for the next 25 years.

One of the things that I found appealing when I attended my first ApacheCon event was that it wasn’t just another software conference–I’d been to tons of those. It was clearly also a reunion of friends. People who were doing good work, but who also enjoyed doing it together and had been for a long time. They were also an incredibly welcoming community, and people I had just met quickly felt like people I’d known for years.

I think that true sense of community is what really sets this foundation apart from many other software-producing organizations. I see it not only at the foundation level, but within many of the PMCs. I’m certainly not so naive as to think that every contributor or even member is having that experience, but I certainly think it’s a worthy aspiration. This is a volunteer organization, and continuing to be strong as a volunteer organization must mean that we are a place people want to be and enjoy spending their time.

We have 797 active members and 9,437 committers. But we also have many, many, many more thousands of potential contributors that we should be looking to for the future. I look forward to seeing that pipeline continue to grow.

Spend some time in the coming weeks and months thinking about how you can be a part of that. If you’re already active in a project, have you considered becoming more involved at the foundation level? Are you interested in shadowing a director or officer to learn about those roles? Perhaps joining the writer’s group mentioned above, the Community Development PMC (ComDev), or another working group? If you’ve just discovered the ASF, perhaps it is just finding your first contribution!

Of course, the easiest thing you can do is forward this newsletter to colleagues you think might be interested in being a part of the ASF as well. I hope they’ll find it to be the same welcoming community that I did, and that you’ll be a part of making that happen.

Ruth Suehle
President, ASF