Microsoft-sponsored Outercurve Foundation turns to Apache for leadership
Well, this is different. Jim Jagielski, a co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation; a director of the Open Source Initiative; and currently a consulting software engineer for Linux giant Red Hat is now president of the Microsoft-sponsored, open-source friendly Outercurve Foundation's Board of Directors.
Jagielski takes over the role of President from Sam Ramji of Apigee, who held the position for the past three years. "My plans are to help make Outercurve one of the pre-eminent open-source foundations," said Jagielski in a statement.
He continued, "We hope to be able to provide more guidance and help to a larger group of people, and to expand our presence at related conferences and summits. I feel that Outercurve is not only ideally suited to be the central clearinghouse for open-source governance and community expertise, but is also the only foundation which makes this a prime objective."
Outercurve, formerly Microsoft's CodePlex Foundation, is an independent foundation. Its primary backers remain Microsoft, and starting in 2012, AOL.
The Foundation's charter calls for it to be license- and project-agnostic. Over the years, the group has positioned itself to work with other open-source foundations, rather than compete with them. Microsoft has passed along several of its open-source products and technologies to Outercurve -- including the the Orchard content management system; the NuPack package-management system; and the Mayhem open-source scripting application.
The other new officers include Tony Hey, of Microsoft, as vice president; Sam Ramji, the former president, will stay on as secretary, and Gianugo Rabellino, of Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc., as treasurer.
This move, which brings one of the most respected names in open source to the head of the Outercurve Foundation, can only help the Foundation's reputation in free-software and open-source circles. Maybe, just maybe, Microsoft really is getting serious about open-source software.
Related Stories: