Slashdot Mirror

http://www.apache.org/bin/ls is a site running FreeBSD and doesn't have a /bin/ls, so I don't think this proves anything.

Taken from http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/components.html:

CJAN provides CPAN like services for Java libraries:

http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs/jakarta-commons-sand box/cjan/

Taken from http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/components.html:

CJAN provides CPAN like services for Java libraries:

http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs/jakarta-commons-sand box/cjan/

Java has a better library structure than perl, with each package being in a well defined place in the classpath. Also documentation for Java libraries tends to be better because of the javadoc comments that everybody writes. Regression tests and dependency checking for java libraries would be cool.

Luckily, there are great places to turn for java libraries even without CPAN supporting them. The Apache Project has many classes that I consider essential now. The Giant Java Tree has thousands of open source libraries. Not to mention the stuff I've written.

This should be a great boon to Java, a language renown for, well, sucking. But at the expense of the greatest of all languages? It's just to sad for me to express in words. I mean, who uses java anyway?

For Gawwwwds Sake!

Don't even get me started at how much faster, how much cleaner, how much easier to add to, and how much more efficient an enterprise site, like slashdot, would benefit from the full use of J2EE, including EJB's and a nice webcontainer (You can even stay with OpenSource and use Tomcat and JBoss.

Wow, this is the first troll I bit on in a loooong time...

Let's take consumer software. Consumer software is things like applications, consumer operating systems, development tools, etc. Companies like Red Hat, CodeWeavers, Mandrake, theKompany, Suse, etc. all employ programmers. As far as I know, these programmers are making money, and in some cases, the companies are as well. CodeWeavers, for example, contributes code to the Wine project and then writes non-free "easy-installation and setup" utilities in order to have some "value add" that is worth paying for. Red Hat actually makes money from selling only services, as every piece of code that they write (AFAIK) is released to the public under an OSS / FS license.

Now let's take enterprise software. Look at projects like JBoss, Tomcat, Castor, etc. In nearly all enterprise software, there is a need for an "infrastructure layer". My company actually PAYS ME to fix any bugs in JBoss, Tomcat or any of the other things we're using as our "infrastructure" because it's a hell of a lot cheaper than paying for a resale license of WebLogic or WebSphere. Our customers are happy because they get a reliable system. I'm happy because I get paid to work on OSS stuff. My company is happy because they save money (or make more money, depending on how you look at it) using the OSS / FS infrastructure ... everyone is happy. I'm not starving to death, I swear. Lots of enterprise software companies take this approach. Why? Because it makes economic sense to do so. Why? Because if they pay their programmers to fix bugs in an OSS codebase, they get the added advantage of other people (who they do NOT pay) fixing bugs for them, too.

So, I'd hate to be harsh, but ... you're just WRONG.

Yes, well, suexec DOES help. :)
Here's a link to Apache's own info on security (including suexec).

That about sums it up. Most corporations are not in the software business; they have IT staff, but not programming and development staff....just guys that maintain and secure the servers and networks.

Most corporations are not in the car business, still I prefer to have a choice who can fix my car. You know how expensive are even the simplest things in brand authorized car service companies, now only imagine how much more expensive would it be if you were not even allowed to fix your car anywhere else.

These guys aren't going to desk-check all the code for buffer overflows and the like, they just want to install it, configure it, and apply security patches that the software developers wrote.

That's funny, because that's exactly what I do with my Debian boxes. Well, almost. I install them, configure, and I don't apply security patches, I just run apt-get upgrade.

Don't fool yourself, you don't have to check for buffer overflows when you use Debian and you don't have to check for buffer overflows when you use Windows (well, you can't anyway, so let's just say you don't have to). The difference is when you want to customize the software.

To customize IIS you have to hire Microsoft (good luck with that). To customize Apache you can hire someone from The Apache Software Foundation, you can hire someone from Apache Support Webring, you can hire someone from Covalent Technologies, Red Hat, Thawte, Dana Point Communications, or you can hire me - as we all have the source, we all know the internal API and we all have a right to customize Apache.

You can even use one of your guys that maintain and secure the servers and networks if the customizations you need are easy enough. Remember how Apache httpd internals are deigned. The most fancy customization is usually just a simple mod_perl module.

The same is with ASP versus Perl, MS-SQL versus MySQL, MSVC++ versus GCC, et cetera. Using free software is smarter from the business standpoint than using proprietary software, it's only the transition that's difficult, once you've got into the mess of proprietary file formats, protocols and "standards".

That about sums it up. Most corporations are not in the software business; they have IT staff, but not programming and development staff....just guys that maintain and secure the servers and networks.

Most corporations are not in the car business, still I prefer to have a choice who can fix my car. You know how expensive are even the simplest things in brand authorized car service companies, now only imagine how much more expensive would it be if you were not even allowed to fix your car anywhere else.

These guys aren't going to desk-check all the code for buffer overflows and the like, they just want to install it, configure it, and apply security patches that the software developers wrote.

That's funny, because that's exactly what I do with my Debian boxes. Well, almost. I install them, configure, and I don't apply security patches, I just run apt-get upgrade.

Don't fool yourself, you don't have to check for buffer overflows when you use Debian and you don't have to check for buffer overflows when you use Windows (well, you can't anyway, so let's just say you don't have to). The difference is when you want to customize the software.

To customize IIS you have to hire Microsoft (good luck with that). To customize Apache you can hire someone from The Apache Software Foundation, you can hire someone from Apache Support Webring, you can hire someone from Covalent Technologies, Red Hat, Thawte, Dana Point Communications, or you can hire me - as we all have the source, we all know the internal API and we all have a right to customize Apache.

You can even use one of your guys that maintain and secure the servers and networks if the customizations you need are easy enough. Remember how Apache httpd internals are deigned. The most fancy customization is usually just a simple mod_perl module.

The same is with ASP versus Perl, MS-SQL versus MySQL, MSVC++ versus GCC, et cetera. Using free software is smarter from the business standpoint than using proprietary software, it's only the transition that's difficult, once you've got into the mess of proprietary file formats, protocols and "standards".

That about sums it up. Most corporations are not in the software business; they have IT staff, but not programming and development staff....just guys that maintain and secure the servers and networks.

Most corporations are not in the car business, still I prefer to have a choice who can fix my car. You know how expensive are even the simplest things in brand authorized car service companies, now only imagine how much more expensive would it be if you were not even allowed to fix your car anywhere else.

These guys aren't going to desk-check all the code for buffer overflows and the like, they just want to install it, configure it, and apply security patches that the software developers wrote.

That's funny, because that's exactly what I do with my Debian boxes. Well, almost. I install them, configure, and I don't apply security patches, I just run apt-get upgrade.

Don't fool yourself, you don't have to check for buffer overflows when you use Debian and you don't have to check for buffer overflows when you use Windows (well, you can't anyway, so let's just say you don't have to). The difference is when you want to customize the software.

To customize IIS you have to hire Microsoft (good luck with that). To customize Apache you can hire someone from The Apache Software Foundation, you can hire someone from Apache Support Webring, you can hire someone from Covalent Technologies, Red Hat, Thawte, Dana Point Communications, or you can hire me - as we all have the source, we all know the internal API and we all have a right to customize Apache.

You can even use one of your guys that maintain and secure the servers and networks if the customizations you need are easy enough. Remember how Apache httpd internals are deigned. The most fancy customization is usually just a simple mod_perl module.

The same is with ASP versus Perl, MS-SQL versus MySQL, MSVC++ versus GCC, et cetera. Using free software is smarter from the business standpoint than using proprietary software, it's only the transition that's difficult, once you've got into the mess of proprietary file formats, protocols and "standards".

That about sums it up. Most corporations are not in the software business; they have IT staff, but not programming and development staff....just guys that maintain and secure the servers and networks.

Most corporations are not in the car business, still I prefer to have a choice who can fix my car. You know how expensive are even the simplest things in brand authorized car service companies, now only imagine how much more expensive would it be if you were not even allowed to fix your car anywhere else.

These guys aren't going to desk-check all the code for buffer overflows and the like, they just want to install it, configure it, and apply security patches that the software developers wrote.

That's funny, because that's exactly what I do with my Debian boxes. Well, almost. I install them, configure, and I don't apply security patches, I just run apt-get upgrade.

Don't fool yourself, you don't have to check for buffer overflows when you use Debian and you don't have to check for buffer overflows when you use Windows (well, you can't anyway, so let's just say you don't have to). The difference is when you want to customize the software.

To customize IIS you have to hire Microsoft (good luck with that). To customize Apache you can hire someone from The Apache Software Foundation, you can hire someone from Apache Support Webring, you can hire someone from Covalent Technologies, Red Hat, Thawte, Dana Point Communications, or you can hire me - as we all have the source, we all know the internal API and we all have a right to customize Apache.

You can even use one of your guys that maintain and secure the servers and networks if the customizations you need are easy enough. Remember how Apache httpd internals are deigned. The most fancy customization is usually just a simple mod_perl module.

The same is with ASP versus Perl, MS-SQL versus MySQL, MSVC++ versus GCC, et cetera. Using free software is smarter from the business standpoint than using proprietary software, it's only the transition that's difficult, once you've got into the mess of proprietary file formats, protocols and "standards".

That about sums it up. Most corporations are not in the software business; they have IT staff, but not programming and development staff....just guys that maintain and secure the servers and networks.

Most corporations are not in the car business, still I prefer to have a choice who can fix my car. You know how expensive are even the simplest things in brand authorized car service companies, now only imagine how much more expensive would it be if you were not even allowed to fix your car anywhere else.

These guys aren't going to desk-check all the code for buffer overflows and the like, they just want to install it, configure it, and apply security patches that the software developers wrote.

That's funny, because that's exactly what I do with my Debian boxes. Well, almost. I install them, configure, and I don't apply security patches, I just run apt-get upgrade.

Don't fool yourself, you don't have to check for buffer overflows when you use Debian and you don't have to check for buffer overflows when you use Windows (well, you can't anyway, so let's just say you don't have to). The difference is when you want to customize the software.

To customize IIS you have to hire Microsoft (good luck with that). To customize Apache you can hire someone from The Apache Software Foundation, you can hire someone from Apache Support Webring, you can hire someone from Covalent Technologies, Red Hat, Thawte, Dana Point Communications, or you can hire me - as we all have the source, we all know the internal API and we all have a right to customize Apache.

You can even use one of your guys that maintain and secure the servers and networks if the customizations you need are easy enough. Remember how Apache httpd internals are deigned. The most fancy customization is usually just a simple mod_perl module.

The same is with ASP versus Perl, MS-SQL versus MySQL, MSVC++ versus GCC, et cetera. Using free software is smarter from the business standpoint than using proprietary software, it's only the transition that's difficult, once you've got into the mess of proprietary file formats, protocols and "standards".

That about sums it up. Most corporations are not in the software business; they have IT staff, but not programming and development staff....just guys that maintain and secure the servers and networks.

Most corporations are not in the car business, still I prefer to have a choice who can fix my car. You know how expensive are even the simplest things in brand authorized car service companies, now only imagine how much more expensive would it be if you were not even allowed to fix your car anywhere else.

These guys aren't going to desk-check all the code for buffer overflows and the like, they just want to install it, configure it, and apply security patches that the software developers wrote.

That's funny, because that's exactly what I do with my Debian boxes. Well, almost. I install them, configure, and I don't apply security patches, I just run apt-get upgrade.

Don't fool yourself, you don't have to check for buffer overflows when you use Debian and you don't have to check for buffer overflows when you use Windows (well, you can't anyway, so let's just say you don't have to). The difference is when you want to customize the software.

To customize IIS you have to hire Microsoft (good luck with that). To customize Apache you can hire someone from The Apache Software Foundation, you can hire someone from Apache Support Webring, you can hire someone from Covalent Technologies, Red Hat, Thawte, Dana Point Communications, or you can hire me - as we all have the source, we all know the internal API and we all have a right to customize Apache.

You can even use one of your guys that maintain and secure the servers and networks if the customizations you need are easy enough. Remember how Apache httpd internals are deigned. The most fancy customization is usually just a simple mod_perl module.

The same is with ASP versus Perl, MS-SQL versus MySQL, MSVC++ versus GCC, et cetera. Using free software is smarter from the business standpoint than using proprietary software, it's only the transition that's difficult, once you've got into the mess of proprietary file formats, protocols and "standards".

You might want to consider whether WebDAV is a key standard for your needs.

The WebDAV extensions to HTTP 1.1 provide a way for remote authors to manipulate files and collections, and an extensible set of file properties; and addresses issues such as locking.

A related standard provides for versioning: RFC 3253

As such, WebDAV and its associated standards effectively standardise what the various CMS and DMS vendors provide proprietary interfaces for.

The standard is now widely implemented - see www.webdav.org - both in operating systems, and particular clients and servers (although not yet in most of the aforementioned CMS/DMS). For an open source Java implementation of client and server, I use Apache Jakarta-Slide.

It is and will continue to be fascinating to watch how the incumbent CMS/DMS vendors react as their market gets commoditised.

At my current assignment, we are implementing a web site generation system, backed up by the SilverStream e-portal CMS.

The system will be used to create a web site, based on the information in the CMS database. The whole system is implemented using standard JSP components (including struts), replacing the e-portal GUI.

There are plans to do an Interwoven roll-out at this company (mainly for political reasons). But even then, our code will be used because Interwoven doesn't have the capacities for on-line content delivery (at least not in the way we need it). In this scenario, content would be transfered between Interwoven and Silverstream for the online delivery.

At my own company, they use Silverstream as well for a CMS, but there they use Silverstream's interface.

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

which are...
Alexandria the documentation project, Ant compiler, Avalon framework, BCEL binary library manipulator, Cactus test framework, Commons , to facilitate reusable java code, ECS for XML interfacing, James the mail server (think IMAP, POP, SMTP etc), Jetspeed the portal component, JMeter, for performance testing, Log4J debugging methods, Lucene text search engine, ORO for perl style regular expressions and awk/sed shit (see regexp below for regexp style), POI which talks to M$ OLE, Regexp for java style regular expressions (see oro above for perl style), Slide WebDAV connectivity component, Struts to integrate with existing Java codebases, Taglibs for JSP custom code, Tomcat the all-important serving container, Turbine security layer, Velocity object oriented(?) theme engine, Watchdog validation tests. Please don't mod me down for all the links.

Each one is to a important Jakarta project and I sincerely wish that someone had explained to me what each one did instead of me having to plow through twenty web pages to get this information. As a side note, do these people know how to name projects or what?!?!!? For example, Turbine has subcomponents "Fulcrum" and "Torque".

Apple has a point here. In most places minors can not enter into legally binding agreements. This brings up an interesting point. What about licenses like the GPL, the Artistic License, or the Apache License, to name a few. If a minor releases software under one of these licenses, do the licenses apply or are they invalid since the minor can't enter into a legal agreement? How does the law treat a minor's ability to control how their work is treated?

Jakarta's Tomcat was threatened, and, from someone who works in the J2EE market, that woulda been baaaaad. Tomcat is great for prototyping and working at from home (trust me, you don't want to lug Weblogic or Websphere onto your home machine).

Step 2: Redirect traffic from your family domain to the dynamic one.

Step 3: Install Linux on a nice 486 with ~32 MB RAM and at least a 1 GB HD

Step 4: Install apache , sendmail, perl, and maybe webmin if you are completely unfamiliar with Linux.

Step 5: If you want a web front end for your email system, try out NeoMail

Step 6: That's about it, you'll have to mess with the configration files before it runs, but it's worth it. The fact that all your email is automagically downloaded to your local machine is just an added bonus.

Something I'm going to do is a little bit of googlebombing myself. I have about 2500 dynamically generated pages on my site, without ?x=3&y=4 query strings (yay mod_rewrite!) adding to the mess and google carefully picks them up regularly.

So, I'm going to add "In my opinion, <a href="http://www.xenu.net/"> Scientology </a> is a cult you should avoid. Following the preceding link will help you learn more." at the bottom of each page. That should help a little bit. Maybe if enough people did that, the ranking would go up some?

Early on in my career, I wrote a great deal of docs & was responsible for getting the coders to document their stuff. Here's what I found works:

1. Internal code docs: make it a requirement that interfaces and subroutine behavior are documented. Enforce this with code review (which is a great idea anyway). File noncritical bugs against undocumented code. Do this enthusiastically, and eventually your coders will expect to see good docs in their fellows' code.

Tools: freeform embedded docs are OK here; they're only read by programmers. If your group has a code style policy, add a doc style to it.

2. Programmer docs: it takes a programmer to write docs for programmers, and the internal code docs mentioned above won't cut it when you need to create an API manual. Instead, you'll either have to be lucky (or medieval) enough to find (or force) a programmer to generate the docs, or you will have to train up a tech writer to be a programmer. The latter is slower, but overall more effective.

Tools: Programmers read docs while writing code, so that means paper output or docs they can view in or near their code editor. Plain HTML is surprisingly poor for reference docs, but if you add effective searching & automatic crossrefs, it's OK (see the online Apache docs for example).

I like creating docs in FrameMaker (from Adobe) since it outputs serviceable HTML w/indices, graphics, & crossrefs, has an excellent WYSIWYG editor, gracefully handles massive documents up to encyclopedia size, prints books well, is available on Win/Mac/UNIXen, and (very important) stores files in a diff-able (plays well with CVS) format.

3. End user docs. These are best written by a tech writer who's also a power user. You'll find that most programmers are not power users; they know their own bit of the system extremely well, but bupkus about the rest and often aren't really interested in using the whole product for which they're coding. Make sure the people selling/promoting the product review end-user docs, too.

4. File bugs against docs. This has been mentioned elsewhere, but it bears repeating: treat errors and missing features in your docs at least as rigorously as you treat code bugs. Make sure the support folks can and do file bugs; they're the people who hear about the bugs after release.

Tools: gnats is the bomb: simple, cheap, modifiable, works anywhere. Make a doc-bug category that your writers manage.

5. Put tech writers on the engineering team. Many organizations think docs are sales materials or something, so they put the writers in the sales, marketing, or support department. This makes for bad docs. Instead, tech writers should work next to and at the pace of coders. Ideally, doc writing starts as soon as the design phase completes. (You do have a design phase, right?) Good in-progress docs are an excellent roadmap for the coders, and result in the docs & code converging on completion at the same time.

6. Hire or grow professional writers. Pretty much anyone who speaks the language can write good docs, but only people who like writing will stick to it through ten releases. Personally, I didn't know I liked writing until someone hired me to do it. Presto, professional writer!

In this situation, I use XML. I invent my own markup language that is self-consistent and describes the API of a system. I then use an XSLT processor, Apache Xalan to be precise, to transform the source to various other formats including: a web site, one big printable web page, PDF, and I've been thinking about writing a stylesheet for man pages as well.

The only issue with a system like this is version control of your source files, which is highly situation specific.

this is of course a good example of making money with open source software. However, apache is distributed under their own license not GPL.

I'm sorry, but Microsoft or the PC vendor has never made anyone keep the original OS on it.

Yes they have. A PC has been sold whose BIOS verifies that the OS is Windows. It's called the Xbox. I know the Xbox is a game console, but it's only the beginning.

But now youre talking about a not so tech-savvy user, and youre assuming that they'll use Apache for a www server?

What about a tech-savvy user telling a not-so-tech-savvy user "if you want to share a few files, and you don't want to be subject to the security holes in both Windows's built-in file sharing and IIS Personal Edition, why not use this program?" That's the audience I was talking about.

We use a couple of methodologies in my work place. Granted we are a Java shop so some of this stuff doesn't apply across the board, but the concepts work for almost any language/development platform.

First, XP Style testing. Test first, and test often. Write a test case for every class you make, test everything, unit test, regression test, integration test you name it just TEST it.

Second, simplify your development process. There really should not be the need for multiple people to be working in the same file/class/header etc... Assing pieces of the project to different developers and model it out, have them work in there rescpective pieces, if you MUST assign multiple people to the same header, thats okay, but make sure they work together closely to not step on each others toes. This is really a planning issue.

Third, I assume you are following a build process (nightly, weekly etc..), we use Ant to help with this. Granted it doesn't help for the problems of developers stepping on each other during the day. But it forces everybody to check in there code and make sure it works, everyday (we use nightly builds).

Okay with all of this stuff, we rarly EVER have problems. Our code is usually close to bullet proof (the constant testing), each developer really knows the portions of the code they worked on, and can quickly make fixes if needed (the simplification of the development process), and we are constantly aware of our timeline and progress (nightly / weekly builds).

Anyways, thats just how we do it ;)

Please read this.

Yes it's only Tomcat, but Tomcat is a big part of Jakarta.

The Robotcop download page states that no binaries are available for versions of Apache HTTP Server designed for M$ Windows, and the binaries that do exist (for Red Hat Linux x86 and FreeBSD x86) aren't very compatible with mod_ssl.

"So compile it yourself!" For one thing, according to the compilation instructions, those who want to compile Robotcop for Windows will have to wait a year (estimated) until Apache 2.0 is no longer eta but Released. For another, not everybody can afford a license for M$ Visual Studio, which is required to build Apache HTTP Server; apparently, this popular Win32 version of GCC doesn't cut it.

In other words, Robotcop won't work for consumers who serve web pages from their home workstation that runs Windows.

If it weren't proprietary, security issues that crop up again and again every six months with it may never have been the disasters they always are. Apache is not a monopoly as it is a volunteer based organization not charging for anything and accepting donations

You can like IIS all you wish but until microsoft commits itself to a more secure and hopefully open product it is not as trustworthy as many many alternatives.

The spec is called OLE Compound Documents, and an open source import/export library was recently added to the Apache Jakarta stable of projects.