Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference North America 2026

Kubernetes documentation is facing a veering wind in users. Since the start of 2026, there have been twice as many global users as there were in 2025. With 15 localizations of the Kubernetes docs and 11.59 million active users in 2025, and 3 yearly releases, maintaining Kubernetes documentation and growing contributors can be daunting. This session explores how the Kubernetes project developed a community, processes, and practices to grow contributors and aid worldwide adoption.

Learn how Apache Superset, the top open-source project in Business Intelligence, re-tooled their entire world of user/admin/developer documentation.

Our new Extensions architecture gave us the chance to re-imagine how we WANT our docs to work. This isn't AI-generated docs... it's using AI to re-engineer how our docs build themselves.

Learn how we managed to:
• Federate scattered readmes/wikis/etc. under one roof
• Independently version areas for different release cycles and intents
• Automate screenshots and content to "keep up" with the codebase
• Bring API docs, React Story book, and more into a centralized interactive portal
• Leverage AI to maintain docs... for people AND for humans
• Syndicate content from third party sources to be the end-all-be-all of Superset documentation
• Adding AI tools (for free!) to provide chat-based support AND learn where our docs are falling short from the result
• Use the codebase itself to build and maintain long-tail aspects of the docs

We've learned a lot of hard lessons over the years, and we're happy to share the process, ideas, and tools we've used to take things to the next level.

In open source, a project's survival depends on its contributor funnel. If developers can't build, test, or grasp your project in the first ten minutes, they'll leave. Documentation is the primary interface for that experience, but is often the most neglected part of the repository.
This session goes past the basic README to show how maintainers can set up a clear Documentation Development Life Cycle. We will explore the 'Docs-as-Code' idea, treating documentation like code by keeping it in Git, peer-reviewing it, and checking it with CI/CD pipelines.
Key takeaways include:
The Pipeline: Setting up automated linters (Vale, Markdownlint) to enforce style and technical accuracy.
The Process: Make sure every new feature includes updated documentation to prevent it from becoming outdated.
The Community: Learn ways to help non-coders contribute, and manage docs with people all over the world.
Join this session to learn actionable steps you can implement right away to make your open-source project more welcoming, robust, and future-proof. Start applying these strategies today and transform your documentation process.

When you approach your public code repositories with teaching as the primary goal -- designing them specifically to help others learn -- you transform simple code sharing or tech blogging into open-source teaching.

Discover how documenting your technical learning journey through small, focused open-source projects can accelerate your learning, establish your expertise, and create value for both the open-source community and enterprise development teams.

Examples of my adventures in open-source teaching include:

* A 32-line working web application, and its 41-line fork that, in 9 lines, adds automated unit tests.
* A fully-CI/CD-tested OpenTofu module in less than 100 lines of code.

In this session, you'll learn practical strategies for right-sizing demo repos, choosing the right platforms for sharing, and capturing the unique value of your "beginner's mind" to help others learn.

This birds of a feather (BOF) session is for two audiences to get together. OSS funders & members of OSS projects who are seeking funding. The goal of the BOF is to share experiences from both perspectives. To be clear, this is not a match-making session or a funding giveaway, but an exchange of experiences. The BOF facilitators will seed the discussion with insights from interviews of both audiences, also our personal experiences from implementing the funding programs of the “Paid Open Source Model” (POSM).

We’ll discuss the changing landscape of open source funding. Long-time funding programs, like the Mozilla Open Source Support (MOSS) awards closed doors. However, new funding programs are designed to align with open source values are offering new opportunities, whether it is funding from blockchain treasuries like POSM or government programs like the German Sovereign Tech Fund.

The outcome of the BOF is two fold. One, maintainers and OSS project members who are seeking funding, can better understand how to access funding. Two, OSS funders can hear directly from projects to better understand what process improvements could help with funding more effectively and efficiently.