The ICFOSS-Apache joint mentoring programme, successfully completed its first training bootcamp at Technopark, Trivandrum . The three-day bootcamp (21-23 June 2013) had about 55 participants. The resource person for the camp was a Brazilian programmer and Open Source expert Mr. Luciano Resende, Vice President (Community Development), and a volunteer of Apache Software Foundation.
Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is one of the top global producers of Free and Open Source Software. It is a distributed, decentralized global community of developers, all of whom contribute voluntarily. The software they produce is distributed under the terms of the Apache License and is free and open source software (FOSS). ASF has been one of the most prolific producers of software, with close to 200 live projects being developed currently. Many of these are global standards and the best in their class.
Apache also develops new projects in the Apache Incubator. The Apache Incubator allows small, experimental projects to get numerous facilities such as experienced mentors, legal vetting, project management support, hosting services, Apache branding, and hosting/code management infrastructure. Joining the Incubator also opens up projects to thousands of developers around the world who may join these projects and accelerate them to completion. Projects that are successfully incubated join the Top Level Projects (TLPs), which are ready for production use. Examples of successfully incubated Apache projects include OpenOffice, originally developed at Sun Microsystems, and Apache Cassandra, originally developed for FaceBook by Avinash Lakshman and Prashant Malik, which became an Apache incubated project from 2009. There are over 35 projects being incubated currently, and close to 100 which have graduated from the incubator.
Apache Software Foundation team will provide initial training to a group of selected participants, and then helping them to launch projects within the Apache system so that they get the benefit of the Apache Incubator, especially that of mentors, who are top class programmers. This way, students from Kerala get access to a world-class programming ecosystem, through which they can upgrade their own competencies. Said Mr. Luciano Resende
ICFOSS is currently exploring other such partnerships which can improve the competency profiles of Kerala’s students as well planning to run further batches of such training programs with Apache, under its pre-incubation services. Once we have sufficient numbers of trained students, ICFOSS plans to use them for further training to more students, thereby enabling many more students to join global teams. This will be helpful in our achieving the vision of a global FOSS destination said ICFOSS Director Satish Babu.
