Member, Incubator PMC member, Board member
I joined Apache as a committer on the incubating JDO project in 2005 and became an Apache Member in 2007. I was appointed Assistant Secretary in 2009 and Secretary in 2010, where I served until 2019. I was elected to the Board of Directors in 2019 and currently serve as a Director.
I was originally attracted to Apache by its approach to governance, where the people doing the work decide what direction to take the project. This is exactly the opposite of how most corporations work, where “the smartest people in the
room (managers and executives)” make the decisions.
Once my own project was accepted into Apache, I looked around to see what else I could contribute to, and joined a number of projects where I could help. I also started looking at the intellectual property model of licensing of contributions and licensing of the end products. That led me to start contributing to the Secretary role, processing the “paperwork” granting IP rights to the Foundation.
Recently it has come to my attention that people feel that the Foundation has “too many rules” which go against the free expression that people look for. Looking deeper into this issue, I found that there are some common themes that, if understood better, can make the experience easier.
Sessions by Craig Russell
- Why is it So Hard... (2024)