ApacheCon 2016

The Apache Way tells us that we need to try and run our projects using consensus as much of possible – but what does it actually mean to the man or woman on the ground? Ask 5 different people what they understand by consensus you will probably get 5 different answers but that doesn't mean that we haven't achieved it. In this presentation Sharan will talk about about how becoming part of an Apache project has educated her about the role and use of consensus, and that applying it in real life can be a bit more challenging than the theory.

The "Apache Way" is the process by which Apache Software Foundation projects are managed. It has evolved over many years and has produced over 100 highly successful open source projects. It generally works well! But not always..

In this session, we'll follow on from the theory, and look more on the practice of how it works. We'll look more at cases when it has worked well! And when it has had problems. We'll see more of the boundaries, the things that can be changed, and those that are fixed firm rules. We'll see how businesses can get involved, and where project independence means they need to step back. Licensing, Trademarks, Decisions, Marketing, Infrastructure and more.

If you want to take your knowledge of the Apache Way to the next level, or learn more on how to help your new project stay within it, this is the session for you!

So, your business has already opened sourced some of its code? Great! But now, someone's asking you about giving it to these Apache people? What's up with that, and why isn't just being open source enough?

In this talk, we'll look at several real world examples of where companies have chosen to contribute their existing open source code to the Apache Software Foundation. We'll see the advantages they got from it, the problems they faced along the way, why they did it, and how it helped their business. We'll also look briefly at where it may not be the right fit.

Wondering about how to take your business's open source involvement to the next level, and if contributing to projects at the Apache Software Foundation will deliver RoI, then this is the talk for you!

How can a business benefit from the lessons learned from various Open Source projects? How can they leverage the processes and methodologies which make open source projects so successful and open source communities so healthy? What is Inner Sourcing? Jim will make sense of it all.

Many folks in the community appreciate and contribute to FOSS. But sometimes, your employer may not be on your side. There are a lot of things that we can all agree with respect to what the FOSS community would like to see companies do. From the small things, like being more polite when interacting with volunteers and writing high quality bug reports, to the more expensive and time consuming things like employing maintainers of software you use or donate significant money. However, it requires a lot of work to get your company to move in this direction. You need to have good, solid arguments and employ smart strategies. In this talk, we build on the experiences we have from working with Free Software inside Spotify and recount lessons learned. We also look at other well-publicized examples of organizations engaging with the FOSS community and help provide strong arguments for persuasion.

Even for those of us who aren't developers or Apache committers, the world is digitizing. As a consequence, while still confined to the relative niche of the technical and open source worlds, open standards are set to become an increasingly mainstream concern. As they govern the world around us, they deserve a "political science" of their own. In her presentation, Joanna Madej will compare the evolution and development of international treaties with the evolution and development of open standards, arguing that principles of international politics and international law can be applied to studying this evolving "international politics" of software.