Almost everything and everyone at Apache use email lists to get work done, including this Community Development project right here! When people send email to a list, many other community members get the message, and someone usually provides a useful reply. Every email list at Apache is archived: most lists are archived publicly. That means that newcomers to a community can learn how decisions on a project have been made in the past, because all the email discussions a project has had are archived.

If you have questions about anything at Apache, the first thing to do is find the right mailing list - and then send your question!

Read This First

Detailed instructions on how to use Apache email lists (subscribing, sending email, reading the archives, and other technical steps) are available on our main developer site. You can email most lists without subscribing, but some lists require that you subscribe first. Most emails are moderated, so they won’t show up on the list immediately. You may need to wait a day, especially if you are new.

Please be sure your question is on topic for the list, and that you have at least checked the relevant documentation first. Everyone at Apache is a volunteer, and if you don’t do your homework, we probably can’t help you. It’s also best to follow our email etiquette guidelines.

Find The Right Email List

Finding the right list helps get your question in front of people who will know the answer. Each project at Apache uses their own dev@, user@, and other email lists - so asking about Apache Tomcat on the Apache Cassandra lists is likely going to be ignored.

Most projects have a Mailing Lists, Community, or Contact Us link on their homepage, so start there if you know which project you’re asking about. If you don’t know which kind of list to ask on, consult our full list of all Apache-wide mailing lists.

If you have any non-technical questions - or a question for us here in community development - ask here by sending email to dev@community.apache.org!
You can also read the archives of our dev@community email list to see what other people have asked and learned.

Read The List Archives

Almost every list at Apache is archived publicly. Browsing the archives is a great way to learn about how a community has done things in the past, or to learn about why a project operates the way they do. The ASF maintains an official archive and allows both browsing and searching through all public email archives: