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

They Care.

[phigga]

IMHO, this is what sets OSS above/apart from The Microsoft Way. 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.

Re:They Care.

[phigga]

>> True, but I don't think it's just a Microsoft thing.

I'll agree with that...unfortunately for Microsoft, they're the largest example ever of a red-tape-laden software giant, and most comments that *should* be generalizations end up becoming anti-Microsoft slams.

It makes me wonder, though, if large software corps don't have something to learn from this "event" as the article keeps calling it. Would it ultimately be productive/counterproductive to, say, stop work on all new projects (or new features to old projects) in order to spend a couple weeks fixing important, nagging bugs?

I suspect that I'm thinking too much like a small business...software giants probably have entire teams devoted to fixing bugs while the other programmers keep cranking out new features (which will of course be based on the original buggy code).

WTF

[slashrogue]

Maybe Chairman Bill doesn't "get" it because he's too busy answering press calls about his generosity in donating his billions to them poor brown people over there.
What is this elitist, racist bullshit? I can't even read the rest of the article now. Yes, let's flame someone for donating to poor people. He should put all of his money in a vault and go swimming Uncle Scrooge style and laugh at "them poor brown people" in his spare time. What. The. Fuck.

Re:WTF

[ChatHuant]

If you put a quarter in the cup at mcdonalds each time you get a big Mac, chances are you're donating a larger fraction of your income to charity than Bill Gates does. Sure, it's better to donate something than nothing, but as the old saying goes, it's not what you give, it's what you sacrifice. The point of the comment was that Bill Gates can't make up for all the wrong he's done by giving away what is, to him, a pittance.

Not that I don't like a good rant, but let's run some numbers.
Assuming you eat 3 times a day at McDonalds, you end up giving 75 c a day, or less than $275 a year. Assuming you reached 49 years (as old as Bill Gates) despite your terrible dietary habits, and you started working at 20, you ended up donating less than $8000. Even if you're at poverty level, that is you make $9827/year, your total income over this period would be close to 285000 dollars; so you're giving about 2% of your total income. Bill Gates donated close to $27 billion, and has a net worth of about 47 billion, so that's about 36% of his net worth. Looks like Gates got you beat here too.

Re:WTF

[TheOneBiscuit]

I despise your viewpoint. Are you attempting to say that although his donations have helped millions of people, it doesn't matter because it didn't hurt him enough. I am not a big fan of Microsoft, but your comment is pathetic.

Skills

[wombatmobile]

These guys have the skills to be Microsoft millionaires

Skills isn't the hard part. It's the timing.

Doesn't this sound weird?

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

Maybe Chairman Bill doesn't "get" it because he's too busy answering press calls about his generosity in donating his billions to them poor brown people over there.

Umm... Shouldn't the source be MadRacistPenguin?

Just a note

[stratjakt]

Real journalism doesn't contain stupid shit like this: "Maybe Chairman Bill doesn't "get" it because he's too busy answering press calls about his generosity in donating his billions to them poor brown people over there."

There you go, simultaneously racist, stupid, and ignorant.

I think Bill's promise to give away 90+% of his net worth is more noble than anything any slashdotter will ever accomplish.

The OSS "community" has a bad reputation precisely because of ignorant stupid bullshit statements like that one.

Re:Just a note

[Ithika]

Your failure to spot satire writ large is unfortunate, but nothing compared to the claims you make about the OSS community's "bad reputation"... I don't even know what that reputation is. This whole article is about their *good* reputation - their ability to get things done without meaningless corporate nonsense getting in the way.

What are *you* contributing that's so useful, besides your knee-jerk reactions and inability to read not-so-subtle sarcastic statements?

Re:Uh

[mrbooze]

If you're "poor brown people", scrabbling in the dirt hoping to find a morsel of food for your children, would you rather have a well-designed robust web server, or a sandwhich?

The world needs both free software *and* generous charitable donations. Don't discount one because you prefer the other.

And don't play the "Oh, well, it doesn't count because it's not a significant portion of his worth". A hungry person doesn't give a damn how much someone had to sacrifice to give him that bowl of soup.