The Truth with Jokes

Q: Are ASF committers arrogant?

A: Yes, we are.

_Q: Is the ASF a club? _

A: The ASF is a non-profit corporation, but, yes, it’s organized like a club. We have meetings, and minutes, and a board of directors. Just like your kid’s soccer club!

_Q: Is the ASF exclusive? _

A: Yes, it is. We exclude committership to “people that we believe are devoted to the task and match the human attitudes required to work well with others, especially in disagreement”. Even so, most projects manage to attract ten or twenty active committers. Very large projects, like Jakarta, have hundreds of committers. Of course, not all of these committers are arrogant. Some are merely smug.

Q: Why not lower the bar to commit rights? Why not hand out write access to anyone who asks?

A: It’s simpler for us to expect people to first submit patches. (And, of course, it’s all about us!) Just to play hard to get, we usually string people along this way for at least six months before offering commit access. Mainly, this is because creating accounts is a bother.

_Q: Why not change the system? _

A: The system works for us, where “us” is defined as thirty top-level ASF projects with almost two thousand ASF committers. Some projects, like Cocoon and Struts, were created here. Others, like iBATIS, Lucene, MyFaces, and Tapestry, began elsewhere and then joined the ASF. Some projects, like Ant and Tomcat, were created elsewhere and then reinvented here. Evidentally, arrogance loves company!

_Q: Don’t the people who download and use your products have rights too? _

A: Yes. Users have all those rights conveyed to them by the business-friendly Apache License. We like to say “business-friendly” in a smug way, because some other licenses are just plain mean.

Q: But aren’t you creating software for use by the general public? Doesn’t that give the general public a stake in the project?

A: The software is created and maintained by the development community for its own use, and then, just to neighborly, we share the product with the general public, at no charge. We do accepts tips, but only in the form of a patch.

Q: Shouldn’t open source be more open than that?

A: Our goal is to (deep breath) … foster an environment where people are able to collaborate on software development in a respectful, honest, technical-based way in order to create consistently high quality software that faithfully implements standards, while retaining security as a mandatory feature. (Whew!) After over a decade of experience working in open source, we believe the ASF process is the best way to nurture that environment. We also find it’s the best way to retain the trademark ASF arrogance.

Q: Can other projects join the ASF?

A: Yes, but they have to bend over, grab their ankles, and exclaim “Thank you Incubator! May we please have another?” while ripping out any dependency with an unsavory license. A podling can only embrace what it means to be an ASF project by stumbling through a haze of pain.

(OK, here’s the joke:)

_Q: How many ASF committers does it take to change a lightbulb? _

A: Three. One to hold the bulb and two to turn the ladder while chanting “+1”.

PS: Be sure to enjoy this special day!