My Position Statement for ASF Board Member

Position Statements by Zili Chen (@tison)

I’ve been a member of the Apache Software Foundation for three years. It is my honor to accept the nomination to be a Board member.

For those who don’t know me, I fell down the ASF world in 2018, during a day job using Apache Flink in production. I was impressed by the community’s passion and how people can collaborate globally to deliver high-quality open-source software. Since then, I have been actively contributing to Apache Flink and became a committer in 2019. In the past years, I also contributed to Apache Curator, Apache ZooKeeper, Apache Pulsar, Apache Inlong, and became a PMC member of these projects.

I became an ASF member in 2022 [1]. Starting in 2022, I have been acting as an Incubator Mentor and helping podlings to adapt to the ASF Way. So far, I helped four podlings become TLPs (Kvrocks, OpenDAL, Answer, and StreamPark), and there are four more under incubation (HoraeDB, Fury, GraphAr, and Iggy). According to the experience gained from these podlings, I pushed the new trademark and branding terms of the Maturity Model [2] and the new consensus on incubator name conventions [3]. I also helped the trademark committee to spot and resolve the trademark issues and later became a member of the committee.

Besides being involved in specific projects, I participated in ASF-wide activities. I gave a keynote at CommunityOverCode Asia 2023, participated in a keynote panel at CommunityOverCode Asia 2024, and gave two topics in CommunityOverCode NA 2024. As a part of the conference committee, I co-chaired the community track for two years. I’m going to co-chair the Rust track this year and sponsor the conference personally.

Last but not least, I have a personal blog in Chinese, where I share my thoughts on open-source software, especially how to collaborate with others and sustain oneself.

So, I believe and witness that the ASF is a place where open-source contributors can grow and collaborate. I like it and I’m willing to help in its sustainability and growth.

I am Zili Chen, often known as @tison. I have three primary goals to serve as a member of the Board.

First, spread the ASF way and the impression of the ASF in China and more. During last year’s conference in both Asia and NA, people still asked questions like “If I donate the project to the ASF, must I use JIRA?” or “Are ASF projects always released slowly?” We have evolved a lot in the past years (integrated with the GitHub platform, the undergoing ATR platform, etc.), and I believe we should let more people know about it.

Second, bring a perspective of the East especially Chinese to the Foundation. For example, In recent years, more and more acts around software development and distribution have been released. They can affect the way we collaborate (contribute and consume) in the open-source world. I’d provide the Board with a perspective on how we read these acts so that we can work out a good response.

Finally, extend the ASF’s influence in the open-source world. There are always many open-source developers who are creating day by day. If we can extend the ASF’s interests to the technical domains they focus on and attract those people, we can make the ASF a more vibrant place. I’ve seen the rise of Rust developments bringing new ideas to existing communities like Apache Iceberg, Apache Arrow, and Apache Paimon, as well as creating new communities like Apache OpenDAL and Apache Iggy (incubating). I’d help and foster these initiatives, and keep the ASF a place to produce high-quality & trusted open-source software.