Results (number of persons):

Some interesting comments:

• "I told my boss about the cool project I'm running and got permission to spend some time on it. So I can do at least email and communication work durink office hours."

Results (number of persons):

Results (number of hours):

Results (number of persons):

Some interesting comments:

• "I used to but Jakarta is now eating all my time."
• "I regularly submit bugs to other projects" (very frequence comment).

Results (number of persons):

Results (number of persons):

Results (number of persons):

Some interesting comments:

• "Not really. Mainly it is selfish thing as I was sick of rewritting the same code over and over as I moved from company to company. Apache gives me a chance to have some stability between jobs and reduce the amount of duplication in code. If I can help others then great."
• "To satisfy my itches and give something back to all the wonderfull people who work on these projects"

Results (number of persons):

Some interesting comments:

• "Yes and that the solutions are of higher quality than most commercial solutions we've come across."
• "if a jakarta project fits a requirement or is close to it, i tailor and submit patches. rather than doing it myself of paying for something i cant play with."
• "This is how it started, but it has outgrown my day-work needs by far."
• "Jakarta policies suck really big time in respect to formal decision making. This means handling your own forks of content because the rules just don't enable a community to got on with management of thier own affairs. All you need is one -1 are you are stuffed - irrespective of the rationale - and even a rationale isn't required. As such, we maintain several concurrent repositories, we synchrnize every now and then, and when it makes sence we submit our content to back into Apache. With better rules on community driven decisions we would contribute a lot more."

Results (number of persons):

But 12 said it was a nice side-effect.

Some interesting comments:

• "However my real reason for working at Jakarta is because it improves me as a programmer. I write open source java because it allows me a way in which to have a personal toolset which is not tied to a company. I am at Jakarta to standardise this toolset, deprecate parts of my toolset which Jakarta already have better, and to see my toolset improve. It also protects me legally later on as I have renounced legal ownership."
• "I concur with you on the fame. Part of the reason for pushing myself into Jakarta and not just my own code is to be able to increase my technical network, write a book, write articles, talk at a conference, name-drop the apache email/website, find a job in the future, get on a JSR, and get technical respect from local peers with less effort. A kind of American Express for Java. So far it has been very useful in that respect."
• "Yes. I have learned so much from participating and listening ( email/irc ) to developers here in the last few years. It is a dynamic that is different from on-site co-workers."

Results (number of projects):

Results (number of persons):

15 committers mentioned that Apache was not "elitist". I have to apologize for having used the wrong word. I meant "elite" not "elitist".

Some interesting comments:

• "Jakarta/XML is not alone in this regard (jboss has smart people as does the KDE project and other projects)"
• "One thing that sets us apart is our tolerance and support for industry groups. At one stage more than half the Jakarta/XML developers were paid by either Sun or IBM which probably contributes to this. I have seen several developers (who are not paid by anyone to work on opensource) put in time to implement a feature so that a commercial user can use it."
• "Yes, although it is splintered a bit [there are people who I've never heard of], and I'm starting to see Jakarta being seen as this immense giant of Java Open Source. Suggestions that Apache would take over Swing or the Sun JVM are worrying for customer relations. People actually think that Apache would have a big interest in this without wondering if it's a bit step away from Apaches USP. I see a lot of discussion about Apache's work on the JCP and with Sun in the media. This is interesting but something which doesn't seem to be talked about here."

• Do you feel that Apache solutions provide the most innovative technology available?
• Do you feel that the level of 'support' for the Apache projects is better than support provided for commercial offerings?
• What's the best thing about being Opensource developer? (Answer: The people)
• What's the worst thing about being Opensource developer? (Answer: The people and their egos)
• What's the best thing about being Opensource user? (Answer: The ability to modify, customize things)
• What's the worst thing about being Opensource user? (Answer: The lack of documentation, the toolkits that never get more than 80% finished, the low quality of code etc.)
• What country are you in? Also, what nationality are you? I would love to see a breakdown of the demographics of Apache coders. Age/gender/native-language/native-computer-language.
• Do you use your apache email as your primary Java email?
• Do you use your apache website?
• Does being an Apache committer help you in the job market?
• Do you participate in a local JUG?
• Do you think being an Apache commiter has improved your Java/Xml? Your overall technical standards?
• Do you do work on Apache that you are unable to commit back to Apache? [For example, I write articles which are not my IP so I can't use them as Apache documentation]
• What's wrong at Apache? (Answer: POLICY, POLICY, POLICY. I came from a bakground with the OMG - the world's largest standardization forum - not so different from the Apache community. A lot of smart people. OMG gave "policy and procedures" a much higher priority that what we see at Apache. The differnce is that the OMG comunity driven and control the direction and decisions. Its not the same at Apache - in Apache an individual gets too much control - the all powerful -1 without even a policy concerning reasonable justification. This leads to islands of expertise - community fragmentation. With good policy and prodecudes that put the community in charge Apache could be sigificantly more powerful and dynamic.)
• How do you see the future of jakarta/xml ?
• Have you been getting more and more involved with jakarta/xml since you started?
• Do you see yourself getting more and more involved with your jakarta/xml project(s) in the future, do you see expanding your involvement to other projects?
• Has the recent slump in the economy affected you ability and/or desire to participate in the open source community?
• Has having children [or marriage or anotehr major event in your personal life] severely affected your time to work on Apache.
• How do you think we can improve jakarta/xml apache? (My answer: Get a more common interface and structure across all projects. This is one of the reasons why I'm participating on Forrest. Look at SourceForge; They have a common interface, common directory structure, common forum, common CVS, ...)
• What did you expect to get back from working on Jakarta/XML ? What did actually you get back ?
• What did you want to give to Jakarta/XML ? What did you give ?
• Do you propose Apache technology to others/customers?
• Have you had articles on Apache technology published?
• Have you written a book on Apache tech.?