FeatherCast

Apache NuttX is a real-time operating system (RTOS) built around standards compliance. Because it’s POSIX compliant, code moves easily between a Linux development environment and an embedded runtime. Recorded at Community Over Code in Glasgow, this conversation with Alin Jerpelea (NuttX PMC Chair, Sony) covers why NuttX feels familiar to Linux kernel developers, how a volunteer community supports 15 architectures and more than 400 boards, and why the hackathon is porting Doom from the Raspberry Pi 4 down to Sony Spresense microcontrollers. We also talk about how the PMC stays vendor-neutral with Sony, Xiaomi, and Espressif all involved, where the project is headed after nearly 20 years (including small-footprint machine learning for IoT), and its policy on AI-assisted contributions: they’re welcome as long as they’re marked, but purely machine-generated code is rejected. https://plusone.apache.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/NuttX.mp3 Learn more: https://nuttx.apache.org Getting Started guide: https://nuttx.apache.org/docs/latest/quickstart/index.html Supported boards and platforms: https://nuttx.apache.org/docs/latest/platforms/index.html API reference: https://nuttx.apache.org/docs/latest/reference/index.html Contributing guide: https://nuttx.apache.org/docs/latest/contributing/index.html Prefer video? That’s on our YouTube channel.

Apache HugeGraph is a fully open source graph database stack: the database, distributed mode, analytics, web UI, and the HugeGraph-AI toolkit, all under one Apache license and one community. In this episode, contributor Himanshu Verma explains why graphs matter for AI: ordinary retrieval finds text that looks similar, but some questions are about how things are connected, and a graph lets the model look up real facts instead of guessing. We talk about how HugeGraph compares to Neo4j, JanusGraph, and Apache AGE, its support for both Gremlin (Apache TinkerPop) and Cypher, and the 1.8 release work, including the MCP server, GraphRAG, text2gremlin, Helm charts for Kubernetes, and the new Hubble UI. Himanshu also walks through a demo: you upload your documents, an LLM pulls out the people, companies and links between them for you to review, and then you ask questions in plain language. It can run on a local model through Ollama, so private documents stay on your machine. We finish with how to get involved, from filing issues and fixing docs to taking a good first issue. https://plusone.apache.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/hugegraph_himanshu.mp3 Learn more: https://hugegraph.apache.org Prefer video, that’s on our YouTube channel.

“Responsible” means aligning the Foundation-wide use of AI with the ASF’s greater mission of providing software for the public good. That’s our raison d’être. Prefer video? That’s here: https://youtu.be/DgQtZzeHX2w The Responsible AI (RAI) Initiative is one of the newest efforts at the Apache Software Foundation. In this PlusOne conversation, recorded at Community Over Code in Glasgow, Rich Bowen sits down with Jeff Genender and Andrew Musselman to talk about why the Foundation launched RAI, what “responsible” actually means in practice, and how the Initiative is helping Apache projects use AI well — without getting in their way. We cover the copyright and licensing questions behind AI contributions, why every contribution still has to clear the same human-review bar it always has, the security-scanning work that protects projects from a rising flood of automated PRs, and the ASF’s own LLM gateway with self-hosted models. We also get into the Foundation’s philosophy of best practices over rules, the sponsors backing the effort (a \$1.5M donation from Anthropic and continued support from Alpha-Omega), and the longer-term dream of an open-weight model under the Apache umbrella. https://plusone.apache.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/RAI.mp3 Learn more and get involved: https://rai.apache.org/ https://llm.apache.org/ Mailing list: [email protected]

Apache Polaris is the open source metadata catalog for the data lakehouse — a vendor-neutral implementation of the Iceberg REST Catalog spec. In this episode, Rich Bowen speaks with PMC members Jean-Baptiste Onofré (Dremio) and Yufei Gu (Snowflake) about how two competing companies came together under Apache governance to build a shared standard, the project’s extraordinary release velocity since graduating as a TLP in February 2026, and where the roadmap is headed — including multi-format support, AI use cases, and fine-grained access control. https://plusone.apache.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/polaris-jbo-yufei.mp3 Learn more: https://polaris.apache.org Prefer video? That’s on our YouTube channel.

Rich Bowen speaks with Jinwoo Hwang about Apache Geode, the distributed in-memory data management platform that delivers low-latency, scalable data access for high-performance applications. In a rare story of open source revival, Jinwoo describes how Geode — originally born as GemFire in 2002 and donated to the ASF in 2015 — declined into inactivity by 2023 and was voted for retirement, only to be brought back to life with a major 2.0 release in December 2025. They discuss the massive modernization effort required (Java 21, Spring Framework 6, Jakarta EE), the personal cost of that work, and what’s next for the project’s security and stability roadmap.   https://plusone.apache.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/apache-geode-jinwoo.mp3 Prefer video? That’s on our YouTube channel More about Apache Geode at https://geode.apache.org/

Tim Saucer, PMC member and primary maintainer of Apache DataFusion’s Python bindings, joins PlusOne to talk about how he went from frustrated Spark user to open source maintainer — and how the project is using LLM-powered “skills” to keep its Python API in full parity with the upstream Rust library. He walks through the three developer-facing skills they’ve built (expose new APIs, make them Pythonic, audit the user-facing docs) and shares practical advice for other projects looking to adopt a similar approach: treat your skills like test-driven software, constrain the agent to one shot, and use your existing examples as the ground truth. The conversation also covers what’s next for DataFusion Python, including lambda functions on array columns, distributed compute via DataFusion Comet and Ballista, and how a single-line code change can move a local workflow to a distributed cluster. https://plusone.apache.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/datafusion-tim.mp3 Prefer video? That’s on our YouTube channel. More about DataFusion at https://datafusion.apache.org/

Andrew Lamb, PMC Chair of Apache DataFusion, explains how this open source query engine lets teams build specialized analytic databases without reinventing SQL from scratch. We cover how DataFusion grew out of Apache Arrow, why it split into its own top-level project, how it attracted nearly 1,000 contributors, and what the rise of AI coding agents means for an embeddable database engine. If you’ve ever wondered what sits under the hood of the modern data stack — and how open source communities form around infrastructure no end user ever sees — this is the conversation. https://plusone.apache.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/datafusion-andrew-lamb.mp3 Prefer video? That’s on our YouTube channel. More about DataFusion: https://datafusion.apache.org/

In the March board meeting, the Apache Software Foundation seated a new board of directors, which included three new members. Emmanuel Lecharny has been around the ASF for a long time, but this is his first term on the board. He discusses some of his backstory, and his priorities for this board term.   https://plusone.apache.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Emmanuel-Lecharny-Board-of-Directors.mp3 More about the board. Prefer video? That’s on our Youtube channel.

In the March board meeting, the Apache Software Foundation seated a new board of directors, which included three new members. One of them, Chris Dutz, had served a few terms before. In this interview, he talks about his priorities for the coming year on the board. The ASF Board – https://www.apache.org/foundation/leadership Prefer video? That’s on our YouTube channel. https://plusone.apache.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/CDutz_Audio.mp3

Apache Grails recently graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a top-level Apache project. But it’s far from a new project, having been started 20 years ago! James Fredley, and James Daugherty from the Grails PMC talk about why they came to Apache, along with many other topics. https://plusone.apache.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Grails_render.mp3 Links: Grails Release process documentation Prefer video? That’s here: Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:31 Why Apache? 03:45 What are you working on? 06:08 Community building 07:51 New in 7, coming in 8 09:36 The move to Jakarta 10:25 Release/build automation 24:36 Time to upgrade 26:57 Contact us!