Zen and the Art of Apache Maintenance

SilentBob4 writes "Apache recently held a week-end "infrathon" to sweep the dust out of the corners, squash a few old bugs, drink a wee bit of ale (maybe a wee bit more than a wee bit) and get their hands dirty with the Zen of maintaining their infrastructure. MadPenguin.org crashed the party in search of the secrets of getting into the "zone" while peeking into the grittiest of the nitty gritty with one of the darling projects of open source, Apache." From the article: "The guys that I interviewed were among some of the brightest minds in open source; Brian Behlendorf; Upayavira; Greg Stein; and Roy Fielding, all of whom are well known and regarded (or deserve to be). These guys have the skills to be Microsoft millionaires, but instead flew thousands of miles to sit slouching on couches and squatting on cushions hacking infrastructure maintenance for free, primarily just to hang out with each other, even though they could have done the same thing on line."

Comments

Re:They Care.

[M.C. Hampster]

These guys got together over a weekend to do maintenance and fix bugs on a project they truly care about. The guys at MS only started fixing bugs when it became obvious that their ineptitude might cost them some of The Almighty Dollar.

Your comment is very interesting because I'm guessing by the wording of your comment that you obviously prefer the Apache/OSS way. But when I read your comment, I think I'd rather trust my systems to be running on Microsoft. Why? Because I'd rather do business with a group that's motivated by money because I have something to bargain with. If it's just a group who does it for fun, who's to say they won't just stop? Or find another interest? What then?

Note: Answering my question, "Well, you have the source code, so you can do whatever you want!!1!" only tells me you probably have very little real world experience.