Microsoft Invests £60K In Open Source Apache Foundation

Darryl K. Taft,

Microsoft may have helped its status with the open-source community by reiterating its pledge to deliver $100,000 (£60,700) to the Apache Software Foundation over the next few years.

Microsoft has again committed to its pledge to deliver $100,000 to the Apache Software Foundation over the next couple of years.

Microsoft initially announced its plans to commit $100,000 a year to ASF in 2008 at OSCON (the O’Reilly Open Source Convention). This time, the software giant announced the recommitment of its contribution at the ApacheCon conference in Oakland, Calif. The ASF is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

Over the past few years, Microsoft has steadily increased its participation with and contribution to the open-source community. For instance, at the recent EclipseCon Europe conference, Microsoft announced plans to make Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 more available to Eclipse developers.

In a statement, Microsoft said: “We’re happy to share another milestone in our work with open-source communities: renewing our commitment to the Apache Software Foundation. Microsoft is recommitting $100,000 over the next couple of years to support the mission and work of the Apache Software Foundation.”

In a post on Microsoft’s Port 25 open-source community blog, Peter Galli, Microsoft’s senior open-source community manager, interviewed Justin Erenkrantz, president of the ASF.

Responding to a question from Galli regarding why Microsoft’s participation with ASF is important, Erenkrantz said:

“As you know, last year Microsoft announced its Platinum Sponsorship of the ASF, which it continued this year. While we are delighted to have Microsoft’s financial support as a sponsor of the Foundation, I think the more important aspect of Microsoft’s relationship is that they are now contributing to a variety of Apache projects.

“Since we announced the sponsorship last year, Microsoft is now contributing to at least four Apache projects: HBase, Stonehenge, QPid, and POI. This really continues the significant sea change from within the organisation—Microsoft now isn’t afraid of having their employees contribute to Apache projects on Microsoft’s time. Committers from Microsoft sign the same legal agreements that we require from all of our contributors.”