Apache Fineract Graduates to Top-Level Project

Over the past year, our entire developer community has transitioned to and worked towards becoming a top-level project of the Apache Software Foundation.  It’s with great pleasure that we can announce that Apache Fineract has now formally graduated from incubation into a top-level project.

Contributing Mifos X to the Apache Software Foundation was a giant step for the maturity and evolution of our project. Becoming a top-level project marks an important transformation to grow our developer community and  achieve our long-term vision of establishing an open standard for financial inclusion innovation.

Here’s a brief excerpt from the press release. Please visit the Apache Software Foundation blog for the full announcement:

“In many ways Fineract broke new grounds as an Incubating project at the ASF,” said Roman Shaposhnik, Apache Fineract Incubator Mentor, Director of Open Source Strategy at Pivotal and Vice President Technology for ODPi at Linux Foundation. It was the first project that was originally developed by a non-profit: Mifos Initiative. It was the first project with an extremely important social agenda in mind: speed up the elimination of poverty. It was the first project that fully embraced the next generation microservices architecture. But there’s one thing that gets me even more excited: how quickly the Fineract community embraced ‘The Apache Way’ of project governance. They truly made my job as a mentor smooth sailing and I wish them to grow by leaps and bounds now that they are a TLP at the ASF.”

Deeper Focus for Mifos.org

With development now governed by the Apache Software Foundation, the Mifos Initiative can focus on being the leading voice for open innovation in financial inclusion and continue to grow our global community. We look forward to:

• Stewarding the global implementer community that is building, supporting, and using Apache Fineract for financial inclusion.
• Guiding new volunteers and strategic partners towards making contributions to Apache Fineract
• Endorsing and enforcing standards and design for responsible client-centric innovation
• Cultivating a global network of innovation and support partners building on top of Apache Fineract
• Curating an open marketplace of solutions and innovations for digital financial services.

Thank You!

I want to thank our entire Project Management Committee but give a special thank you to some essential individuals –  to Adi Raju and Nazeer Shaik for implementing the code changes to make Apache Fineract Apache-compliant and overseeing the rigorous release process. To Myrle Krantz for her patience and persistence in spearheading the process and leading us down the Apache Way. To all of our mentors at The Apache Software Foundation including Ross Gardler, Roman Shaposhnik, Greg Stein, and Jim Jagielski.

I’ll close this post with another excerpt and quote from the press release, this one from Paul Maritz:

“To fully participate in the digital world, all people need access to banking services and electronic money,” said Paul Maritz, an industry executive and investor, and a long-time supporter of Mifos.org and Fineract. “Open Source is playing an increasingly important role in today’s software world, and Fineract is an important foundation to enable access by all to the digital world.”