Why Marketing is Important for Open Source Projects

Posted by The ASF First Contributions

Even the most brilliant piece of code can struggle to gain traction without effective marketing. Marketing – blogging, social media promotion, and participating in tech events – helps open source projects gain visibility and awareness and also helps build and nurture communities. Marketing activities such as highlighting a project’s technical milestones, sharing end user stories, and showcasing key features can also draw in talent, attracting developers and contributors from all over the globe. The ASF Marketing & Publicity team gave a talk on this topic at the 2023 Community Over Code NA and 2024 Community Over Code EU events.

By increasing visibility, building a community, attracting contributors, and establishing credibility, marketing helps ensure the growth and sustainability of open source projects. This #FirstASFContribution post highlights the contributions of six ASF community members to better underscore the positive impact marketing efforts can make for open source projects.

Anne (Jing) Zhu –  Apache Answer 
Anne Zhu writes and manages blogs for Apache Answer. She says her work “is like writing a journal for the product, recording all the big dates and user experiences. It’s a great way for contributors to explore our products and inform users what new features are available.” 

Anne is thankful to the community of Apache Answer developers who helped her get started – from writing guides to showing her patience as she learned the world of open source.  

Ivet Petrova – Apache CloudStack, PMC Member
Ivet Petrova helps advocate for Apache CloudStack by promoting its adoption, highlighting its features and capabilities, and encouraging others to contribute to the project. Her efforts help grow the community and increase awareness of the platform.

Ivet also supports event management and helps organize the yearly CloudStack Collaboration Conference. In February 2023, Ivet was invited to become a PMC member, which underscores her dedication and commitment to the project. Ivet also helps develop and distribute case studies that illustrate how CloudStack is adopted by organizations around the globe. 

Teyza Ponce Alvarez – Community Over Code 
Teyza Ponce’s work with ASF projects over the past three years led her to become part of the event organizing team for Community Over Code EU 2024. “I intend to continue volunteering for and participating in ASF activities, because I believe the ASF community is great and has a lot to offer people all over the world. I would like to increase my involvement with communication and marketing campaigns to help the ASF grow its spirit of community in a non technical and personal way.” 

Wentao Liu – Apache OpenMeetings and Apache Directory
Wentao Liu’s first contribution to Apache OpenMeetings involved creating a JIRA ticket to fix a Chinese translation issue. Wentao has also given several talks at Community Over Code Asia and FOSSAsia Summit to introduce Apache OpenMeetings integration with Apache Directory. 

Lindsey Zurovchak – Apache Cassandra 
When asked about her contributions to Apache Cassandra, Lindsey Zurovchak says, “I love presenting at conferences about the work that my team at Bloomberg does on Cassandra – both the problems we solve for our users at Bloomberg as well as the work our team has contributed back to the open source project.” Lindsey has presented talks at ApacheCon NA 2022, Cassandra Summit 2023 and Community Over Code EU 2024. 

Paul Brebner – Open Source Technology Evangelist at Instaclustr (by NetApp) 
Paul Brebner has written nearly 100 blogs on open source software, covering various use cases and technologies including Apache Cassandra, Kafka, Spark, Zeppelin, Zookeeper, Superset, Redis, Cadence, Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, OpenSearch, TensorFlow, OpenTracing, and others.

Paul has also spoken regularly at open source conferences since 2017 including Community Over Code (formerly ApacheCon), while also serving as the track chair for Community Over Code Performance Engineering track. 

The Community Over Code Ethos
The stories of these first-time contributors showcase the “community over code” philosophy that’s deeply embedded in ASF’s open source communities. These experiences demonstrate how contributions can come from a diverse range of individuals, and how even simple bug fixes ensure the long-term stability of ASF projects. We applaud the collective efforts of these contributors and recognize that the open-source community’s strength lies in collaboration and support.

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