Eight Years Of Apache

Kyle Hamilton writes "The Apache Software Foundation today announced that its HTTP Server platform has reached a milestone of eight consecutive years of World Wide Web technology leadership. Since its first release in April of 1995, the Apache HTTP Server has become as pervasive as the Web itself. According to two separate and independent surveys, the Apache HTTP Server, which originally established itself as the leading web server technology in April 1996, continues to acquire even greater market, growing faster than all other competing web server technologies. Achieving eight straight years of technology leadership confirms that the open source model works. Apache is now successfully deployed in a diverse set of environments, from large commercial entities to small nonprofit organizations. We are grateful to the community for their continued support and participation in the development process, said Sander Striker, Vice President of the Apache HTTP Server Project. We are firmly committed to continuing to provide the most accessible and standards-compliant Web server platform in existence."

Comments

Milestone

[Meiyo Neko]

Congrats! Here's to another 010!

Re:Milestone

[Meiyo Neko]

Getting warmmmerrrr

Hip-hip Hoorah

[agent dero]

The Apache HTTP project is a great project at that, but let's not forget apache's other AWESOME projects, Ant, jakarta, XML, PHP.
The List

Thanks to the success of the HTTP project, we've gained these, sounds like we should 'pay' tribute: http://www.apache.org/foundation/contributing.html

Re:Hip-hip Hoorah

[tha_mink]

Ah, I don't think they mean that XML and PHP are their projects :)

But they are APACHE projects. From the PHP website..."PHP is a project of the Apache Software Foundation."

Isn't it more like 11 years?

[Meowing]

I always thought of Apache as a continuation of NCSA httpd. Wasn't that more like 1993?

Re:quick - kill it! kill it!

[wirelessbuzzers]

I'm one of many who has dropped Apache in favor of thttpd.

So the next time you're setting up a webserver and Apache is being a pain in the ass - kill it and switch to thttpd. You'll thank me.

Well, thttpd is certainly faster and probably easier for images and other static files, but it is also certainly not faster for PHP and many other dynamic types. It also doesn't support SSL, which is a must in many cases.

Celebrate with a new version

[h3]

Seems like 1.3.31 was officially released today (11 May) after last week's premature 'announcement' here.

Here's the official announcement/changelog.

A new version of modssl to go with it too- just in time for the new server I had to set up today :).

-h3

Re:quick - kill it! kill it!

[Edgewize]

A word of caution: thttpd is not the brilliant solution that a lot of people think that it is. The best features of thttpd are its low CPU and memory footprints, and its simplicity for virtual hosting. But those are pretty much its only features.

For sites without too many dependencies per page (javascript, images), it's great. But for most people, there's a huge shortcoming: it does not support persistant (Keep-Alive) connections. Every file request has to wait for a new TCP connection to be established. When your average ping time is 250+ ms, that hurts BAD. Broadband users don't notice so much but modem users get shafted.

Also, thttpd has serious issues if your total fileset exceeds 1GB. It keeps a cache of last-used files via mmap(), but if you exceed your VM address space (lets say, a couple dozen 200 MB videos), you're in a world of hurt.

There are commercial versions like Premium THTTPD that cure many of these shortcomings, and include a host of other features like FastCGI for running PHP, etc.

But in the realm of free software, there is no one-size-fits-all best server. Apache isn't THAT hard to configure, and it beats thttpd in a lot of important areas.

8 years of redundancy

[billcopc]

Apache rocks the shiznit all right, but to me this means 8 years of being forked halfway-to-hell because the core Apache group is so adamant about dismissing user-submitted patches. Don't get me wrong, I love Apache. I just hate having to custom-tweak it to get it working in a logical way (for me). Stuff like easily-refreshed configs for hosting providers, and non-broken child spawning logic (because I'm still on 1.3x), and a few other ridiculous nags that have been ignored for the sake of "purity".

This is going to end up something like Mozilla, where the 3rd-party forks are more popular than the original.

Re:8 years of redundancy

[dirkx]

Apache group is so adamant about dismissing user-submitted patches

I'd hate to dispell the lore - but the web server is in fact largely build from quality checked and polished versions of those submitted patches. Sure - a patch which fixes 1 thing and breaks 3 others; or optimizes for one rare case at the expense for 2 common cases may need some work - but over those 8 years very few patches and suggestions have gone to waste. If they where good they typically pop up at some point later if they where too radical at the time of first posting.

Soo keep them coming !

Dw.

Re:quick - kill it! kill it!

[Edgewize]

Thanks to my parent (modded -1?) for this link, looks like a fork of thttpd with performance-enhancing updates. Still not ideal for large filesets but a lot more efficient than plain thttpd, and full keep-alive support.

http://xoomer.virgilio.it/adefacc/httpd/thttpd/tht tpd-2.21b-pNN/index.html

Re:quick - kill it! kill it!

[ovoskeuiks]

The comparison chart on their website -> Last updated 12jul98. It'll take a little more than a 6 year old chart to convince me it's a superior webserver