The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the non-profit organization responsible for the support of Apache open source projects, has launched a new site called “Apache Extras.” Hosted on Google Code, the site will house code that’s associated with Apache-related projects that are not part of the ASF’s more than 80 top-level projects or part of the Apache Incubator. The site will help support and highlight the community working on open source projects that are related to or built with Apache Project technology.
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Apache Extras will provide code repositories, bug tracking, and project wikis – all familiar things to those who’ve used Google Code Project Hosting before. The code hosted there won’t be considered official ASF projects and won’t be managed by the foundation. As such, participants can use whatever license and project management process they desire – although if they’re aiming for eventual inclusion, they should obviously choose the Apache License 2.0.
The hope is that by hosting the code together, Apache Extras will provide a certain level of visibility for these open source projects. According to the ASF, the new site will provide “a home for projects that are unable to, or do not wish to, conform to those rules yet still want to signal their relationship to official Apache projects.”
For its part, Google says, “So what can we do, as a company, to support open source communities? Providing hosting infrastructure certainly helps, but we can even go a step further. Successful open source software projects are rarely islands of development; larger projects tend to develop ecosystems of related but “unofficial” projects around them. It’s sometimes hard to identify these sub-communities, and so we can help by bolstering their presence: give them a clearer sense of identity and location by inviting them to live under a common banner.”
Existing Google Code projects related to Apache products can be migrated to the new Apache Extras site, while those involved with new Apache-related projects can start quickly by filling out a form.
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