Jim Jagielski – First-Ever Open Source ICON

December 21, 2025

We recognized the great Jim Jagielski with our first-ever Open Source Icon Award at the 2025 All Things Open conference back in October. He received it in 2024, but was recognized this year.

Jim’s past, current and ongoing dedication to open source and the community is recognition-worthy, to say the least. In addition, he’s a true friend of All Things Open and has helped us behind the scenes in so many ways.

A quick story..

Many, many years ago when we were putting our first conference together we were looking for “star”speakers. Jim, as a co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation and having made significant contributions to many of the internet and web’s core technologies, certainly qualified. However, we didn’t think we had a prayer of confirming him to speak. After all, no one knew who we were, literally, so what would be the motivation?

Not only did Jim agree to speak, to our utter shock, but he was one of the most kind, generous, affable, and generally good-hearted people we had ever come into contact with. I’m pleased to say he remains the exact same today. He hasn’t changed a bit.

Jim, thank you so much for your contributions and for your support, partnership and friendship. You’re one of the good ones, and we are grateful.

BTW – you can watch his acceptance talk here.