Justin Erenkrantz, President of the Apache Software Foundation, spoke with The Bitsource about The ASF’s growth over the years, being the President of the ASF, and the tenth anniversary of the Apache Software Foundation.

(Erenkrantz)
I started contributing to the Apache HTTP Server and the Apache Portable Runtime projects in 2001. Since that time, I have become a member of the “project management committees” for those projects. I have also become elected to be a member of the foundation. Currently, I serve on the Board of Directors for the foundation as well as being President. I recently completed my PhD in Information and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Irvine.

Q: Given that this is the tenth anniversary of the Apache Software Foundation, what will be special about this year’s ApacheCon?

Justin Erenkrantz: The tenth anniversary is a special time for us – it allows us to both reflect upon our past and think about what the next ten years will bring for Apache as well as the larger open source community. For our upcoming ApacheCon in Oakland, we have a stellar lineup of trainings and sessions that try to represent as many of our projects as we can fit into the event. In addition, we will be having a number of events that are free to the public: meetups in the evening around specific projects as well as a one-day BarCamp-style “unconference” event. Plus, I’ve heard rumors that the cake is not a lie (https://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/the_cake_is_not_a).

Q: Where has the ASF come from in the past 10 years since its inception, how has it grown over the years?

Justin Erenkrantz: By far the largest change has been in the breadth and scope of the projects that are under our umbrella. For many people, Apache is synonymous with the Web server – but we have over 2,000 committers working on 100 different independent projects under our auspices. Through our Incubator and Labs projects, we welcome any projects that folks are interested in creating or bringing to Apache.

Q: How do attendees benefit from attending ApacheCon?

Justin Erenkrantz: ApacheCon offers a rapid way for developers to get exposed to a wide variety of Apache projects. If you’ve heard of Axis before, but haven’t had an excuse to play with it before – you can sit in a session and hear from the core contributors to the project about how Axis works. The same goes for Hadoop, HTTP Server, Tomcat, Jackrabbit and other Apache projects. Unlike other events, our speakers are almost always the people who wrote the functionality that they are talking about – so don’t be afraid to try to stump the speaker! Chances are you won’t be able to – or another contributor will be in the audience to give you your answer.

Q: What is your favorite aspect of ApacheCon?

Justin Erenkrantz: While the sessions are top-notch, my favorite aspect of ApacheCon is the “hallway” track. It’s those discussions at 1am over last call that truly great ideas emerge! For such a geographically diverse group of developers, ApacheCon is the rare time when our community gets to interact face-to-face and exchange ideas in rapid fashion.

Q: What is the most rewarding aspect of being the President of the ASF?

Justin Erenkrantz: My role as President is primarily focused on helping the community execute their collective visions with as little pain as possible. With over 2,000 committers and over 300 members of the foundation, there is increasingly a lot of work that needs to happen behind the scenes organizationally so that the community can focus on what it does best: create terrific code (and documentation!).

Q: Can you speak about some of the events and speakers at this year’s ApacheCon?

Justin Erenkrantz: We have a terrific set of keynotes lined up for the event – Brian Behlendorf (one of the founders and our first President) will be giving a talk about how open source still has something to tell the world in general. We also have Kirrily “Skud” Robert who will be discussing how we should strive to be more inclusive – at Apache, while we always aim for being open and inclusive, there is still a lot more we can do to get contributions that span gender and geographic boundaries to name a few. Finally, we have a panel of early contributors reflecting on where we’ve been and telling amusing anecdotes that not everyone may know!

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