Ten years, 1,600 release votes, and a clear lesson: open collaboration works. Discover how Apache Incubator projects turned release reviews from rule-checking into mentoring, and what this decade of data reveals about building healthier open source communities. Description: What can we learn from a decade of release votes in open source communities? From 2015 to 2025, over 1,600 Apache Incubator release vote threads showed how project collaboration and growth have changed. In this talk, I’ll share practical lessons from analysing votes across more than 160 projects. You’ll see how better documentation, mentoring, and automation changed a stressful compliance process into a positive learning experience. You’ll learn about the changes: fewer rejections, quicker reviews, and a shift from a strict to a more collaborative tone. I’ll also discuss how release cadence reflects community health and what early warning signs to watch for before a project slows down. Whether you’re a maintainer, mentor, or contributor, you’ll come away with ideas to improve release workflows and help build stronger, more confident communities.