[wplug] Signing up with Apache (WAS: Re: 45 Minutes with High Schoolers)

[J Aaron Farr]

Meant to send this out to everyone on the list...

On 2/3/06, Zach <netrek at gmail.com> wrote:
> Where do you go to sign up?

  http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html

Apache, like most open source organizations, functions as a
meritocracy.  Everyone is invited to participate.  Getting involved
means subscribing to the mailing lists of a project you use, answering
questions, submitting patches and documentation.  You can get more
ideas from my website:

  http://www.jadetower.org/muses/archives/000009.html

Once you've shown that you're serious about sticking around and
helping out with a given project, you'll be offered commit access.
And after really sticking around and getting involved in more projects
and more "behind the scenes" work like infrastructure maintenance,
you'll find yourself nominated to be a member of Apache.  This process
of meritocracy isn't designed to be exclusive, but to ensure that
those who are entrusted with guiding the organization really care
about it.

That's the traditional way of "signing up."

Today, Apache actually adds more committers through the "Incubator"
than anywhere else.  Existing open source or commercial projects which
want to join Apache (and for commercial projects that means becoming
open source) have to go through an "incubation" process to ensure all
the copyrights and other legal issues are handled properly.
Incubation is also a time for project developers to learn to build a
healthy open source community.  So in this way, developers become part
of Apache by taking their project through incubation.  The ASF if
growing rapidly in this respect, as you can see from the list of
incubating projects:

  http://incubator.apache.org/projects/index.html


Anyway, that's probably a longer answer than you expected, but I
figure some others on the mailing list might also be interested.
Moreover, the basic process I've described here works for most open
source projects, be they formal organizations like Apache or just some
small singular project on SourceForge.  So pick one, or start you own,
and get involved!

--
  jaaron