Session: From Fork to Foundation: How the OpenSearch project crafted a journey to open collaboration
Over the last 10 years or so, a number of open source projects have changed licenses and users have responded in different ways to deal with these changes. In 2021, AWS discovered that the Apache 2.0 project they were delivering as a service to customers, had changed its license, and the company needed to find a way to continue to deliver its service to customers. They decided to fork the project and start maintaining the open source branch on behalf of its customers and the broader community. This talk in the form of a fireside chat is about the work the maintainers behind OpenSearch have done to create a more open and collaborative project. It is not easy for a project maintained by an organization to ensure a neutral governance, and with the recent announcement at OSSummit Europe, OpenSearch has done just that. We will discuss the challenges of forking an open source project, intentional steps to take to make the governance more open from the start, and some of the choices available to build a strong and sustained project. Since the start, creating a diverse and global project of users, contributors and maintainers has been an intentional and overarching goal for the OpenSearch project.
