By: Brian Proffitt, Vice President, Marketing & Publicity
The Apache Software Foundation has come a long way since its founding in 1999, shepherding over 300 projects and incubating podlings. On December 5, the ASF reached another significant milestone: the addition of its 10,000th committer.
Within ASF projects, committers are project contributors who have demonstrated their benefit to the project over time, and, because of their contributions, they can be given this status by other committers within the project. Committers are given the responsibility by the community to help create a product that will outlive the interest of any particular volunteer. While not full ASF members (who have voting rights within the foundation), committers still have a range of responsibilities to their project, including:
- Deciding on release plans and releases
- Applying patches
- Helping users
- Monitoring commits and issues
Assigning the role of committer is taken seriously within the ASF, so reaching 10,000 committers is a very important milestone for the growth and lasting endurance of The ASF and the Apache Way. It also reflects the emphasis The ASF has had on community, according to Dirk-Willem van Gulik, one of The ASF’s founding members, and current VP, Public Policy.
“[The ASF is about] finding, first and foremost, a very welcoming community, and a code base only second,” Gulik commented. “When reflecting on [The ASF’s] history, I think of a culture of jointly making things better. I’d observe this is just as true today.“
“For all the AI-enabled software development tools we have today, it’s still humans determining what that software should do, specifying how, writing tests, reviewing code, debugging the result, pushing patches upstream, and integrating pull requests from downstream. The myth of the solo developer may be romantic, but the reality is that real software engineering is as much a social endeavor as a technical one,” ASF co-founder Brian Behlendorf added. “The Apache Software Foundation was the first organization to recognize the primary importance of a well-organized and healthy collective of humans building software together – one where, if you get it right and with some luck, high quality software is a natural byproduct.”
But for Behlendorf, the milestone is also notable for its size for another reason.
“Ten thousand developers is a brilliant milestone to hit – but it’s equally impressive how much production-quality software so central to how the modern world works was written by only ten thousand all-volunteer developers working together. Kudos are due to every one of them,” he concluded.
As we conclude the calendar year, reflecting on this milestone is a great way to cap off a year of change and growth for The ASF.
“Crossing the 10,000 committer mark is a milestone that celebrates the strength and success of community over code and the Apache Way. Each of those people has helped shape a space where collaboration for a shared purpose–software for the public good–thrives,” Ruth Suehle, President of the ASF stated. “Today we’ll take a moment to reflect on that history and express our gratitude to each of those 10,000 for the thousands yet to come.”
