Press releases that refer to the ASF and/or its projects must be approved by the VP Marketing and Publicity prior to distribution. Please allow for a minimum of 10 business days to complete the review. We are sensitive to internal approval processes and will expedite feedback when possible.
Apache projects and their communities are encouraged to actively build awareness of their project and activities through emails, blog posts, tweets, and other means of outreach. Educational opportunities include ApacheCon, MeetUps, videos, podcasts, articles, third party conferences, and related community events.
Whilst speaking with members of the media and analyst community, projects must be referred to as "Apache Project Name" as per the ASF Branding Guidelines. Be prepared to answer "who uses you?": as a project’s known user base grows, PMCs are welcome to promote their users in a "Powered By" page like the Apache Hadoop Powered By page. Create and encourage project supporters to utilize the project’s "Powered By" logo. Ensure that the project maintains vendor neutrality, particularly when referring to project users.
Projects are advised to prepare news announcements and hone their messaging privately within their PMCs (keeping the content confidential to the PMC, and not on dev@, user@ or any other public list or forum) to ensure that the public or press don’t scoop your story before it’s out or publish inaccurate information. At times messaging changes, features are unable to be delivered as intended, testimonials need adjusting, and so on, and it’s best to minimize the chances of your story to get out with incorrect information, or for nobody to recognize your news story because it was covered earlier and is therefore no longer considered newsworthy.
Projects should refrain from issuing announcements under embargo. Pre-announcing project features or release dates to members of the media is risky, as not all journalists or outlets honor confidentiality requests in general, or adhere to embargo dates/requirements. Furthermore, many journalists are unable or unwilling to fulfill requests for retractions or corrections. Be aware, be careful.
Apache PMCs are responsible for the "care and feeding" of a project’s code, community, and communications on a day-to-day basis. Projects are recommended to:
No formal press releases or announcements can be made by a third party on behalf of an Apache project --for example, "Company ABC announces new features in Apache Project Name" (or including it as part of upcoming features/support in their own products). However, interested parties may issue supporting announcements with pointers to official project-originating news providing that a link to the corresponding mailing list(s) and/or blog post is included. Third parties are prohibited from using the official ASF Boilerplate or project boilerplates in their press releases or announcements unless authorized by ASF Marketing & Publicity.
Guidelines for "founding" individuals, organizations, and communities of Apache Projects: many projects enter the Apache Incubator with a recognized individual founder, a group of founders, or a corporate entity where the project originated and/or which was responsible for its development/administration. The ASF is vendor neutral: all Apache projects are overseen by their respective Project Management Committees (PMCs), who guide the project's day-to-day operations. Once a project comes to the ASF, its development and oversight is the responsibility of the project’s PMC and community. There are no "owners" of any Apache project. Individuals and companies who founded projects that are now under the auspices of the ASF may be referred to as "original creator of Apache Project Name" or "original developer of Apache Project Name". Examples: 1) individual’s title --"Individual’s Name, Apache Member (or Committer) and original developer of Apache Project Name"; 2) company whose founders or employees are the original creators of an Apache project --"Company Name, founded by the original creators of Apache Project Name..." or "several Company Name team members are the original developers of Apache Project Name...".
The ASF Marketing & Publicity team is happy to work with organizations as they relate to Apache projects and their overall involvement with the ASF, particularly those with "original developers" status. The publicity/brand/communications guidelines created by Databricks serve as a "good practice" model for other Apache-focused organizations to emulate.