[jaaron]

> IMO, it's not really open source if its run by a company that will eventually use its position to squeeze its users for cash.

I know it's not as popular or sexy as it used to be, but the whole point of a foundation like Apache was to avoid these situations, even more than the way the Linux Foundation is setup. Apache _explicitly_ manages projects to avoid these downsides.

- Single corporation ownership. Projects cannot get out of the Incubator unless they demonstrate a diverse and healthy community. That doesn't mean popular, it doesn't necessarily mean best-in-class, but it means that there shouldn't be just one entity backing a project.

- Membership in Apache is _personal_ not a seat for a given company. If you're a committer on an Apache project and you move jobs, you're _still_ a committer on that project

- The Foundation owns the trademarks. There have been fights about this in the past, but the whole idea is that the _community_ owns the name, so some corporation can't claim to be the sole or official owner by naming their company or product after the open source product.

The core premise of the Apache Software Foundation is community over code, that healthy, diverse communities have a better chance of standing the test of time than open source projects backed by a single individual or company. That's the thesis at least.

The is starkly different from several other foundations, notably the Linux Foundation or Eclipse Foundation which are modeled more around industry consortiums.

Both models have their place, but I believe Apache better models the core values many of us feel strongly about when it comes to free and open source software.

[caniszczyk]

Apache isn't a silver bullet... there are plenty of Apache projects where the individuals are compromised mostly from one company and hide behind the veneer of the ASF... where they are working on the projects per their employment. Gerrymandering is definitely possible and has happened in the past, that's why you have to look at governance and ownership of the marks/build systems etc: https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/10/08/open-source-gerrymander...

I actually prefer the approach of LF, EF or CNCF where it's transparent where folks work for and your affiliation is disclosed upfront. In the CNCF for example, we separate out technical project decisions (maintainers) from funding decisions (members). That is healthier than blending it all in one at the ASF imho and having no idea where person is working for imho.

[FireBeyond]

Agreed. Red Hat isn't perfect, but when I worked there we had a few products that were CNCF under my umbrella, including a few incubator projects. Even though we had several developers working full or part time on those projects, it was always something I was meaningful of, not stacking the project board Red Hat-heavy, to not make it a defacto RH project.

[timcobb]

What is more popular than the Apache Foundation? I thought Apache was top... Is there a cooler/better Apache? If so, please let me know.

And when was Apache more popular? I thought it was the uncool place where stuff was written in Java, that became popular because people's conception of Java (and the language/ecosystem itself) changed.

[Someone]

Apache is both popular and “the place where projects go to die”. They have many, many projects that see limited development activity and aren’t well-known (how many projects in https://projects.apache.org/projects.html?name do you even vaguely know of what they’re about?)

I also think the popularity of the Apache license is part of what makes Apache popular.

> I thought it was the uncool place where stuff was written in Java

They have lots of projects running on the JVM, but “written in Java” isn’t a requirement, nor is “running on the JVM”. See https://projects.apache.org/projects.html?language

[mcpherrinm]

I think CNCF is home to most of the big projects I’ve been contributing to or using lately.