What makes ASF projects successful

September 3, 2026

Yesterday I was invited to give a keynote at CiviCon. After a brief call on the background and scope of the conference I decided to focus on the three pillars of a successful open source strategy: informed usage, upstream first and intentional publishing as a last step. Both, during hallway conversations but also in the panel moderated by Markus Beckedahl one topic came up frequently: What makes the ASF so successful, how does that differ from projects discussed at the conference which originate from the public sector. ...