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Parent was modded as Funny but in fact mod_parrot is not a joke! See Google. People should know that it is in fact a real project with very serious purpose. It won't be used for writing web apps in PASM or PIR (though it will be possible and sometimes even preferable to write Apache modules in PIR) but to use it in the future for what we use mod_perl today (and mod_php and mod_python and... you get the idea). It will be the most important Apache-Perl integration in the future for Perl 6 and Perl 5 (Pony) and indeed for Python, Ruby, PHP and Intercal. THIS IS NOT A JOKE.

Being able to download the technology powering the Google search engine must be the dream of every competing search engine. Maybe this will even result in a free software version which may replace 'locate' and 'htdig' on linux.

The Lucene search engine library is astoundingly fast, compared to other tools like htdig and mnogosearch. I've occasionally contemplated writing a Lucene-based desktop search application. This google desktop search program may greatly reduce my motivation for such a project, though.

The Mac support for OOo1.1.2 is great although it requires X11 to be running. Not that big a deal, since it's on the Panther XCode install CDs. And if you don't want that running, NeoOffice/J allows you to run OpenOffice.org1.1.2 without X11: http://www.planamesa.com/neojava/en/index.php/

I also love the Forrest support:
http://forrest.apache.org/docs/oowriter.html/

(but beware that if you delete a style from the sample OOoWriter file, you can't get it back...)

Therefore, if you release your patented software under an open source license, your patent is now meaningless since the oss license now says how your software can be used.

Strictly speaking, the OSS license says how *one* implemenation of your patent can be used. It's like Tomcat - Tomcat's the reference implementaion of a "Java Servlet Container", and it's OSS, but there are other - proprietary and OSS - Java Servlet Containers out there. I believe Sun (someone more clueful than me chime in if I've got this wrong) initiated work on Tomcat (nee JServ) and then handed it over to the ASF, but that in no way stopped Sun from working on other J2EE projects - even projects very similar to Tomcat.

What the author speaks about here is in my opinion the same Microsoft tried to do in regard to the Sender ID standard draft, and it did not work because according to the (well fundamented, in my opinion) Apache Software Foundation's position (just to name an example), the problem happens when people insist that there must be end users. One of the main goals of free software is to allow everyone who gets a copy of a program to be able to do whatever he wishes with that program, provided that credits to previous changes remain intact, new changes are disclosed, and the receiving party gets exactly the same rights. A patent system is closed in respect to this problem, because the receiving party is forced to ask the original author of the patented software for a royalty if he wishes to make changes and/or redistribute.

What the author speaks about here is in my opinion the same Microsoft tried to do in regard to the Sender ID standard draft, and it did not work because according to the (well fundamented, in my opinion) Apache Software Foundation's position (just to name an example), the problem happens when people insist that there must be end users. One of the main goals of free software is to allow everyone who gets a copy of a program to be able to do whatever he wishes with that program, provided that credits to previous changes remain intact, new changes are disclosed, and the receiving party gets exactly the same rights. A patent system is closed in respect to this problem, because the receiving party is forced to ask the original author of the patented software for a royalty if he wishes to make changes and/or redistribute.

According to a quick telnet...

Apache/1.3.27 Server

I hope that isn't true. That release is 2 years old. As per Apache's web site: "We consider Apache 1.3.31 to be the best version of Apache 1.3 available and we strongly recommend that users of older versions, especially of the 1.1.x and 1.2.x family, upgrade as soon as possible."

See: http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/Announcement.html

Since the website is slashdoted I can't read the FAQ. Does anybody know what's the difference between Hypernate and OJB? Is Hypernate better then OJB?

It is this similarity and 'compatibility' of Java & C# that is now making it easy to port various applications between the two languages. For instance, the very popular Lucene (Information Retrieval library from Jakarta (i.e. Java)) has a very solid .Net port written in C# called dotLucene. The Lucene -> dotLuene port is fairly automated, it appears, which allows developers of the .Net/C# port to keep up with the original software written in Java.

If C#/Java continue in this direction, I think we will see many more applications that have parallel versions in the two languages.

See:
Lucene
dotLucene

http://ant.apache.org/

It's not just for Java.

1) Is this better than HSQL?

As with any comparison, this largely depends on exactly what you are using the database for and what feature set you require. There is some comparison of HSQL and Derby on the derby-user list. To sum up, Derby supports a number of features that HSQL does not, and HSQL has a slight advantage in speed and footprint.

2) Does anyone plan to finally get a database that rewrites its SQL into java code and then compiles it?

You're in luck. This is exactly what Derby does. The optimizer picks a query plan and then an internal compiler compiles the query plan into a java class that performs the actual execution of the query.

For details, see the architecture overview post on derby-dev.

1) Is this better than HSQL?

As with any comparison, this largely depends on exactly what you are using the database for and what feature set you require. There is some comparison of HSQL and Derby on the derby-user list. To sum up, Derby supports a number of features that HSQL does not, and HSQL has a slight advantage in speed and footprint.

2) Does anyone plan to finally get a database that rewrites its SQL into java code and then compiles it?

You're in luck. This is exactly what Derby does. The optimizer picks a query plan and then an internal compiler compiles the query plan into a java class that performs the actual execution of the query.

For details, see the architecture overview post on derby-dev.

The apache webserver is switching to subversion. This was said in the mailing list post here and if you follow the thread it gives some good reasons behind using subversion. Examples from the original proposal include mod_dav_svn and mod_authz_svn which are Apache modules for web interface to the source repository.

Other examples include The Commons TLP and the SpamAssassin project which are projects of the Apache foundation are already using subversion. To see all the projects Apache foundation projects using SubVersion just go here

Useful links: Subversion homepage

Version Control with Subversion Book (mirror)

The apache webserver is switching to subversion. This was said in the mailing list post here and if you follow the thread it gives some good reasons behind using subversion. Examples from the original proposal include mod_dav_svn and mod_authz_svn which are Apache modules for web interface to the source repository.

Other examples include The Commons TLP and the SpamAssassin project which are projects of the Apache foundation are already using subversion. To see all the projects Apache foundation projects using SubVersion just go here

Useful links: Subversion homepage

Version Control with Subversion Book (mirror)

> Its' not the case in Java where it sounds like there's only 1 way to do each thing

I take it from this comment that you haven't actually tried java. You can "explorate" to your hearts content, and there are many ways of doing the same thing (some obviously better than others)

> mostly because of the plethora of APIs (WebLogic, etc.) that corporations force you to use over it...

Now this comment just has me bamboozled... You mean that Weblogic holds sway over you and force you to code in one way over another? Surely weblogic is just an appserver? Which runs code designed to the standard J2EE API spec? The same as using Tomcat , JBoss or Geronimo or even Hibernate? (All of which are free and opensource, and follow the same J2EE spec that Weblogic does -- they just solve separate parts of it, and can be combined to do it all if you require)... I fail to see how this is a corporation forcing you to use one method of coding?

Sure, if you are only going to look at one way of achieving your goals, then there is only one way to go...

> Its' not the case in Java where it sounds like there's only 1 way to do each thing

I take it from this comment that you haven't actually tried java. You can "explorate" to your hearts content, and there are many ways of doing the same thing (some obviously better than others)

> mostly because of the plethora of APIs (WebLogic, etc.) that corporations force you to use over it...

Now this comment just has me bamboozled... You mean that Weblogic holds sway over you and force you to code in one way over another? Surely weblogic is just an appserver? Which runs code designed to the standard J2EE API spec? The same as using Tomcat , JBoss or Geronimo or even Hibernate? (All of which are free and opensource, and follow the same J2EE spec that Weblogic does -- they just solve separate parts of it, and can be combined to do it all if you require)... I fail to see how this is a corporation forcing you to use one method of coding?

Sure, if you are only going to look at one way of achieving your goals, then there is only one way to go...

No matter how good Gnome and KDE have gotten, if the .net and JAVA software is lacking (Mono is not nearly complete, and is exactly fighting this catch-up game, JAVA is a nifty SUN Trap)

Between gcj, Kaffe, JamVM, SableVM, all driven by the GNU Classpath library, experimental stuff like Jnode, and the massive wealth of Java code in projects like Eclipse and those driven by the Apache Foundation..

I'd say that Free java is alive and kicking. Yeah, it still hasn't become usable with respect to AWT/Swing. But most of the core is there, even up to some 1.4 stuff. (and work on 1.5 features is underway)

I don't buy the "catch-up game" argument. Most people don't write programs for the absolute latest and greatest. Platforms tend to reach a certain level of maturity which is 'good enough' for most people, and then it slows down. I think that soon enough, the free Java implementations will be able to compete with Sun's.

For example, how many compilers can you name which fully implement the C99 standard?

Everything is a catch-up game... it's just a question of what the game looks like. MS can arbitrarily change things in the Word file format just to screw with people. APIs don't work that way though, you don't change an API unless you have to.

Apache 2.0.51 is not even available, as 2.0.52 fixes the 2.0.51 regression.

BTW, I have a document about using PHP and Apache2 at http://dan.drydog.com/apache2php.html

This project is incubation, but it might be of interest :

log4cxx

• Log4cxx
• Log4cplus

You may also want to take a look at:
http://math.nist.gov/jnt/
http://www.vni.com/products/imsl/jmsl.html
http://www.mathtools.net/Java/Libraries/

So I've heard good things about SpamAssassin and headed over the webpage to figure out what I needed to do to install, and I found this.

I'm probably going to flamed for this, but that install process is ridiculous. I'm not even close to being a newbie, but there's no way I'd go through that much hassle to install a spamblocker compared to something like SpamBayes that does a standard windows install and hooks right into Outlook. Does anyone thing that these things are reasonable?

1. I'm supposed to extract it to the root of my drive. Sorry, my root is sacrosanct. If the /. crowd is going to complain about RealPlayer dumping shortcuts in my desktop, quickstart bar, and main start menu, how is SpamAssassin making directories in my root any better? At least I can delete the stuff RealPlayer litters around.

2. I've got to install Perl modules? And it doesn't work with certain versions of Perl? The install should include whatever it needs to run. Don't make me track down some particular version of outside software.

3. I've got to generate a batch file and run it to generate the documentation? Why not just include the generated documentation?

4. Step 10 of the install FAQ mentions a D drive. I don't have a D drive. Does SpamAssassin really require TWO drives to run/test properly?

5. The whole install process includes 13 steps, some of which are fairly complicated.

This is one of the reasons why the whole open-source initiative has such a bad, pointy-headed reputation. Where is the focus on usability and user-friendliness? I often get the impression that it's "not cool" to actually put time and energy into making your software anything other that esoteric in its usage. I realy would like to try SpamAssassin, but dealing with the minor annoyances of SpamBayes for the next six months is clearly less work than installing SpamAssassin today. Why doesn't that bother anyone?

I'm probably going get either flamed or ignored for this post, but I would appreciate a reasonable response if there is one. We'll see I guess.

sa-learn --showdots --mbox --spam Spam

The wiki included a link to http://issues.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?listNam e=spamassassin-users@incubator.apache.org&msgNo=15 757 ; it would have been nice to have a list on the front page.

That's in their FAQ.

You can browse the version 3.0.0 Subversion repository. I'd suggest looking at the files UPGRADE and Changes.

Didja notice the Apache feathers on the arrow in the new logo? Nice touch!

Here's something that's potentially useful.

Jakarta's Commons Math library (http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/math/) has some interesting classes (including handling of complex numbers and lots of statistical stuff). I haven't used it in anger and hence do not know the extent of their support for the features you are looking for, but it is a good start. It is also designed to be a lot faster than Sun's math APIs.

And yes, they're all objects and there is no operator overloading. And I reflect sentiment earlier about how this is a Good Thing in general.

By having an open proxy anyone can send/receive data via your proxy server (duh). There are implications: e.g. I've seen someone's server bandwidth being used to serve images in a spam (pr0n) email.

If you don't want people hiving off your bandwidth and potentially using your server's bandwidth for puposes you wouldn't normally approve of, then consider controlling your proxy access.

--
Use your VPS proxy powers for the powers of good

You need to get over your favorite language/technology/term you read in the trade-rag you read last week. And then you need to get over yourself.

Give it up slashdot crowd. mod_perl is not a valid technology for a large scale website! Perl was designed for a task, and that task was NOT enterprise application development.

Spoken like someone who has never had to build a very large site (doing "real" work) completely in Perl/mod_perl. I can tell you that it most certainly can scale to enterprise needs. Did this guy do it right? I don't think so either but he most certainly learned a valuable lesson. Hopefully other people will study what he has done and improve their own systems based on his work.

For the record, Java wasn't built for enterprise application development either. As with Perl, people discovered that Java had a future there and here we are today.

A properly designed website with n-tier sepperation will be able to handle a large load and scale infinitly. You'll note that large websites who actually do real things besides logging people's daily problems don't use mod_perl and a thousand servers. There's a reason for this.

You're assuming two dangerous things... (1) That you can't have n-tier and Perl. And (2) that large mod_perl sites require lots of servers. To believe any of these things is to demonstrate your horrific misunderstanding of computer science in general. I pity the company that lets you design their architecture. Wait, no I don't.... I'll gladly take their money for fixing your mistakes.

Oh yeah, and let us not forget some other languages that are showing promise... specifically Python+Zope. In fact, I know of several people implementing n-tier applications with PHP on the front, Python in the middle and PostgreSQL in the back with much success.

And for the record, here are some large companies and sites heavily using mod_perl.

Want more?

First, you might be interested in Jakarta Commons Math, which is about to release version 1.0 : http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/math/index.html

Secondly, I'd probably consider isolating all the formulas and then put them aside somewhere (XML, database, ...) in a human-readable format.
Then make a parser that can read that format (i.e. using the libraries you mentioned), substitute variables, and calculate a result. The advantages that I see:
1) you centralize all numerical stuff
2) in a readable format
3) so operator overloading (or the lack of) will only bother you in the parser
4) it will be easy to change or add formulas without having to recompile everything
5) easy to write tests (junit)
6) easier to change underlying math-libraries without affecting the rest of your code.

Things licensed as Open Source do better on "just the facts" vs hype. Maybe it's because their audiences would take them to task if they did otherwise, but description of things such as GCC, Wikipedia , the Linux kernel, the GIMP, to name just a few, are completely factual. Not entirely free of marketing but tolerable are the Linux site's description of Linux, OpenSSH, bzip2, Project Gutenberg, and an XWindows organization X.org.

Particularly note Wikipedia and Google. The description of Wikipedia was made and chosen by the users. I can't think of a better testament that what users really want is just the facts. And Google understood that the last thing a person wants to do when anxious to find something quick is be forced to wait for a bunch of pointless graphics and generic ads to load. Really aggravating when on dial-up. Before Google, I got to where I knew just when to hit the stop button when loading Yahoo's main search page so I'd get the text input line and search button and miss all the extra crap they used to put on their main page.

Of course open source isn't totally above marketing. FreeBSD, Mozilla Firefox, KDE, Apache, OpenOffice all lay it on. They can point to all kinds of statistics to justify their hype, but the hype is still irritating when it catches my attention. These are easy to accept in spite of the marketspeak because I've heard from elsewhere that they're good.

Bad though some of those are, Microsoft is worse. Maybe what MS does should be called extreme marketing? In a few moments of searching, I was unable to find even a badly overblown description of just what Windows XP or MS Office is and during the search was wading through hype about MS's latest whatever: "Try the new digital music experience from Microsoft. You'll love it!"

As for throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I will spend a little time trying not to do that, but when it does happen I hope it clues the promoters in to realizing they made the waters too murky. Accepting something in spite of murk is not the way to persuade them to clean up. I like to tell them about it too. You never know when commentary might actually be heeded. I'm sorry if a good thing gets short shrift, but when time is limited, books will be judged by covers. People are often asked to try to word emails so spam filters will pass them. I feel I'm not asking too much of marketing to do the analogous.

Technology will never understand Marketing. The two are different concepts with different goals. Marketing's goal is to attract the people who spend the money and make the big overall decisions to their technology. Technology's goal is to explain itself to the people who have to implement it.

Unfortunately, many technology leaders think Marketing is just cunning language and empty promises. So when they make a terribly useful technology, they fail to explain it and instead spin a picture of what it COULD be.

It is not just companies, either. Take a look at the product pages on Apache.org and see how long it takes to figure out exactly what a technology does, what platforms it works on, what language it works with and how to connect to it. Some of them are good. Most of the time, this information vital to deciding whether the technology is useful or not is hidden three or four links in, and occasionally it's not there at all. I mean, what the fuck is this? (rhetorical question, don't answer). Furthermore, the names of the projects are apocryphal and completely undescriptive. "Do we use Cocoon or Veocity for this project?" Who knows.

Technology is massively complicated. Just think of the question "What is Linux?" The term is used simulateously, by different people, to refer to a Kernel, to refer to a set of development tools, to refer to a GUI, to refer to a development philosophy, etc. Marketing's job is to boil off the variables you don't need to make a purchasing decision, and spice up the biggest advantages. If marketing isn't doing that, if all they're doing is making insane promises or coming up with wierd names, fire your marketing department. They're wasting your money.

Technology will never understand Marketing. The two are different concepts with different goals. Marketing's goal is to attract the people who spend the money and make the big overall decisions to their technology. Technology's goal is to explain itself to the people who have to implement it.

Unfortunately, many technology leaders think Marketing is just cunning language and empty promises. So when they make a terribly useful technology, they fail to explain it and instead spin a picture of what it COULD be.

It is not just companies, either. Take a look at the product pages on Apache.org and see how long it takes to figure out exactly what a technology does, what platforms it works on, what language it works with and how to connect to it. Some of them are good. Most of the time, this information vital to deciding whether the technology is useful or not is hidden three or four links in, and occasionally it's not there at all. I mean, what the fuck is this? (rhetorical question, don't answer). Furthermore, the names of the projects are apocryphal and completely undescriptive. "Do we use Cocoon or Veocity for this project?" Who knows.

Technology is massively complicated. Just think of the question "What is Linux?" The term is used simulateously, by different people, to refer to a Kernel, to refer to a set of development tools, to refer to a GUI, to refer to a development philosophy, etc. Marketing's job is to boil off the variables you don't need to make a purchasing decision, and spice up the biggest advantages. If marketing isn't doing that, if all they're doing is making insane promises or coming up with wierd names, fire your marketing department. They're wasting your money.

Expenses for file-server workloads under Windows, compared to LinuxOS

They compared Microsofts IIS to the Linux 7.0 webserver

Application development and support costs for Windows compared to an opensores solution like J2EE

A full Windows installation, compared to installing Linux, on an Enterprise Server boxen: Is nearly three hours faster; Requires 77% fewer steps

Compared to the best known opensores webserver "Red Hat", Microsoft IIS:

Reliable companies with tried and tested products, or that bedroom coder Thorwaldes who publicly admits that he is in fact A HACKER???

MCSE, MCDST, MS Office Specialist, widely respected Amigan

I'll be convinced IBM contributes as much as Sun to OSS when I see that IBM has GPLed AIX like Sun will GPL Solaris...

Funny, the latest I've heard was that Sun still isn't saying what license they plan to use for Solaris. Do you have a link to an article where Sun claims they will use the GPL? All I've heard from them is that they want to "take the model with Java and bring it to Solaris."

Personally, as a Linux user, I'm much interested in IBM's real contributions to the Linux kernel. Their intent is to make Linux capable of replacing AIX eventually.

I'm not just talking about mainframe and POWER ports, as an anonymous coward above suggested, either. Of course, we all know about JFS, NUMA, SMP scalability, and EVMS (the last of which wasn't accepted, in the end). IBM has also contributed work on ext2/3, IA-64, PCI hotplug, udev, USB, and a number of other projects.

...or that IBM has given a huge office solution like OpenOffice...

How many office solutions do we need? How about a huge software development solution like Eclipse, instead?

...or that IBM supports Gnome with code contribution/HIG...

How about donating code to projects like Mozilla, Samba, and of course Apache (and more Apache)?

Finally, let's not forget that it's IBM that is paying the legal bills that will prove that Linux is free of whatever UNIX intellectual property may still exist, while Sun has been pumping funds into SCO's war chest.

Its going to be a mail/file server. I think you don't need a ton of horsepower.......

It depends on whether you are planning on doing any mail filtering. I have a bunch of experience with MailScanner and ClamAV -- a sendmail server that normally eats 4-5% CPU will quickly start hitting 75% and more. SpamAssassin will add a bunch more to the load. As far as file sharing goes though, you are probably safe.

IMO, these guides are useful for general Linux users who want a guide to various tools on their desktop.

Slackware users, on the other hand, tend to prefer a more terminal/console-centric view, so the usefulness of this guide to anyone using Slackware for, as I've usually seen it, a server of some kind [printer, file, FTP, web], would probably do better to read some other documentation.

Just my $0.25.

http://www.apache.org/foundation/docs/sender-id-po sition.html http://lwn.net/Articles/100873/ http://lwn.net/Articles/100659/ http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/20040902-4153.ht ml http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/09/02/apach e_rejects_sender_id_proposal.html

Does anyone know much about Apache James? Apache's new Java-based mail server? I've been playing around with it and it seems pretty smooth. But how does it compare to, for example, postfix?

One nice feature is that you can extend James using "Mailets" (like applets/servlets but for mail) written in java, which would be great for a java-head like myself :).

Anyway, I was just wondering if anyone knew much about it/actually used it for anything. It would be nice to have a single mail server who's configuration could be used on any platform. jg

Yeah, I was surprised too, but there it is (256 for Unixy systems, 1024 for Windows). Odd... I guess I thought it'd be a bit higher.

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation, incorporated in Delaware, USA, in June of 1999.

From http://www.eclipse.org/org/documents/Eclipse%20BYL AWS%202003_11_10%20Final.pdf

The Eclipse Foundation is formed exclusively as a non-profit trade association, as set out in section 501 (c) (6) of the Internal Revenue Code (the "Code").

If you want to generate/manipulate bytecode directly you should take a look at the Byte Code Engineering Library.

Hmm typical MS blinders. As they have forgotten that there is already a project with this name.Apache Avalon is a API/Framework for java.

Sorry to clue in an AC, but SpamAssassin is used in far more government and business e-mail servers than your typical IT brass would like to admit, and it is now part of the Apache Software Foundation.

Download here:
http://www.apache.org/mirrors/ /RH

Did they just say "entirely in C" and "assured of predictable behavior" in the same context?

o_0

The only thing better than writing everything in C is how it supports BEOS and OS/2!

on freebsd 5.2.1.... APR is required to build:
devel/gmake
devel/automake18
devel/autoconf259
devel/libtool15

so I guess most people don't even realize that APR is one of the fundamental building blocks of all open source applications.

Its too bad it only incldes basic low-level data structure functionality so far.

list of all APR modules

But then again I guess that's the point of this project. Anything to make C coders lives easier is a good thing!

It's important to note that:

"This is the first release of the new Tomcat 5.5 branch, and as such it is not yet stable. We expect significant additional changes, including possible changes to packaging, dependencies, and Tomcat internal APIs, before the first 5.5 stable release is made."

More aggressive spam content filtering of everybody who isn't using SPF -- after all you've whitelisted a LOT of the important people already.

And the cool thing with tools like Spamassassin[1] is, that their method to generate scores (via genetic algorithm) will automatically adapt to how effective a spam indicator SPF has become. So the risk that the filtering could be too aggressive is very low, as long as one uses sound tools.

In fact, it won't be one score, but several, like:
- SPF used and valid
- SPF used and invalid
- SPF not used
- SPF check failed (i.e. DNS down or something)

The funny thing is, if SPF is adopted by spammers more rapidly than by legitimate users, it could even be that a valid SPF entry is considered a low, but significant spam indicator for a while (until adoption gets better). :-)

[1] And yes, it looks like they support SPF, they only don't support Microsoft's Sender-ID.

What in the world?

Apache... criticizing a bad open source license... Whaaaaaa?

For those with no idea what I'm talking about:

http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=200 40220085910
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/02/18/215242.shtml
http://www.apache.org/licenses/GPL-compatibility


On a different note, it's rather funny... In another few years, the OpenBSD guys will be maintaining their own forks of every open source project out there. :-)