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

Only the really important stuff, please...

[veg_all]

...like Lego toilets.

Really fascinating stuff, but I couldn't help mysef:
From the interview with Brian Behlendorf:

MP: What's the most important thing about this event?

BB: I'm not sure this is an event worthy of Slashdot [laughing]

Heh, you must be new here.

Re:Only the really important stuff, please...

[Pollardito]

or maybe he knew that the topic was only indirectly related to an Apple product

I had a little deja vu while reading the headline.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to reply but instead but instead I'm sitting in my comfy chair typing this somewhat unfunny comment for free.

Thankyou!

[pixel.jonah]

...for all your hard "work"

Not worthy of /.

[scovetta]

BB: I'm not sure this is an event worthy of Slashdot [laughing].

Don't you worry yourself about what's worthy of /. Your event stands a good chance of being posted two or three times over the next month.

Re:Not worthy of /.

[DarkMantle]

Your event stands a good chance of being posted two or three times over the next month.

I give it a day, two tops before the first dupe.

"Subversion trees" Ha! Buncha commies - I KNEW it!

[disposable60]

"Subversion trees"

Like a Phone tree, right, only they're subversives!

(yes, sub-version, I know)

Uh

[Elwood P Dowd]

In public statements and in its 2004/9/1 SEC 10-k mandatory legal filing, Microsoft calls open source projects like Apache the second greatest profitability concern behind a weak global economy. Yet Microsoft doesn't "get" why their profitability is imperiled by a movement that their Chairman called a group of "communists." 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.

Wait, what's your point?

Re:Uh

[The Angry Mick]

I don't get it either, dude. Is he complaining about A) Bill being tied up with the press, B) giving away his money, or C) giving to charity, or D) all of the above?

If it's A, it's probably intended to mean Bill should spend more time with his developers. Possibly a valid point, but presented in a horribly malignant way.

If it's B or C, he should seek professional counselling. Soon.

If it's D, there's no hope for him. He'll never be happy and should consider moving to a small shack somewhere in the wilderness - preferably without easy access to the Internet, firearms and/or explosives.

Re:Uh

[daeley]

...or E, he's insinuating that there's more to Bill's generosity than mere generosity, and it has something to do with the press.

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.

Re:Uh

[GotenXiao]

Next time, don't change what's in the article. In public statements and in its 2004/9/1 SEC 10-k mandatory legal filing, Microsoft calls open source projects like Apache the second greatest profitability concern behind a weak global economy. Yet Microsoft doesn't "get" why their profitability is imperiled by a movement that their Chairman called a group of "communists." Maybe Chairman Bill would "get" Open Ssource better if he hunkered down at some infrathons himself.

Re:Uh

[Elwood P Dowd]

But again, it was bad writing, not racism.

That's kindof what I expected. As your other comment to me illustrated, you are capable of making your point. You just didn't do it with that original sentence.

Re:Uh

[Elwood P Dowd]

I didn't change what's in the article; the author did. This AC comment explains.

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.

[Anonymous Luddite]

>> this is what sets OSS above/apart from The Microsoft Way

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

Any large software company will have red-tape out the wazoo. If you had a bright idea and wrote some spiffy new bug-fix, it would go into a repository, need to get sold in house and then reviewed & tested before going gold in a patch god-knows-how-many months later...

As much as anything I think the processes are to help management cover their asses - If it goes through a 17 step analysis and is still wrong, they've done due diligence...

Re:They Care.

[DogDude]

And your point is...?

Re:They Care.

[peasleer]

The Apache Foundation also doesn't have stockholders. Figure out the rest-

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).

Re:They Care.

[iamskelter]

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?

Then you can start paying them for service you had been happily receiving for free. I have a feeling that paying them to support something they've put so much of their time into just might motivate them to keep at it.

Re:They Care.

[Squid]

Because I'd rather do business with a group that's motivated by money because I have something to bargain with.

You don't have enough money to truly bargain with Microsoft.

Re:They Care.

[akadruid]

Everyones motivated by money, and any org. can potentially fail to support their software. The key difference is, a very small company can afford a fix/mod OSS software, but who can afford to get a multiple-billion turnover company such as Microsoft to even listen, let alone do anything?

Say you find a showstopper in Apache httpd: You can wait and hope, hire your own coder, or contract someone else's coding shop. Any of those are viable, depending on the nature of the problem.

Now say you find an identical showstopper in MS IIS: you can wait and hope... or find a new webserver.

Guess which works out cheaper?

Re:They Care.

[M.C. Hampster]

Personally, I don't. But the company I work for does. We pay big bucks to get premium support from Microsoft. If we have some issue with their software, and I take it to them, they'll give me a fix. It's happened before.

Re:They Care.

[M.C. Hampster]

You'd better not be alone in what you demand then. You probably don't have enough money to presure microsoft all on your own.

I'm sorry, this is going to sound very condescending, but when someone says something like this, I really get the idea that they must not deal with this sort of thing in real life, and instead they gain most of their "knowledge" about real world I.T. (especially Microsoft) from Slashdot alone.

News flash for you: If you pay for support from Microsoft, they not only listen to you, but they will fix your problems if they can. We've received non-public fixes, some made especially for problems we've discovered. We're not a Fortune 500 company either.

Who says microsoft can't just stop, if there is no more profit to be had?

I don't know if I can stop laughing long enough to respond to this statement.

So your company can't devote at least one programmer on the project? Then you sure aren't big enough to be even noticed by microsoft.

And how much does it cost to hire a full time OSS expert programmer to support the OSS software I use? $100,000 a year plus all of the benefits? And will one be enough? If I'm running some mission critical software on Linux, I would want more than one on staff, considering people go on vacations, have medical emergencies, etc. So now we're talking $200,000+ a year and up? And that's just for supporting Linux. Suppose I use Apache also. Can't you see how expensive this kind of thing can get? I'll tell you, we spend much less paying Microsoft to support all of our Microsoft products than we would to hire even 5 full-time programmers. And we get the people who really know the product.

Hope that clears things up for you.

Re:They Care.

[M.C. Hampster]

Guess which works out cheaper?

Man, you have no idea do you. I would advise you to check out my other responses. Let me ask, have you actually ever worked with Microsoft? Have you ever had to make decisions regarding how much support you purchase for them? Do you have any idea how much their support costs? If not, then perhaps you shouldn't get involved in conversations that you have no knowledge about.

Re:They Care.

[orasio]

Many projects do have people who care about your problems, and more if you pay them.
If you want something better, RedHat has _lots_ of people working in the specific projects that might need support, and when you pay for support, they fix bugs for you.
Of course, if RedHat does go out of bussines, there's always Novell/SuSE, or even */Debian.
You seem to believe that Microsoft will never cease to support you, but that's just a belief, in bussiness, that sort of thing does happen.
The sensible option in _any_ case is to have an easy way out. There are not many ways out if Microsoft chooses not to support you. If you have a GNU/Linux shop, and RedHat fails, you have lots of real options to keep on going.

Plus, yes, you _do_ have the source code, so in the case of a major catastrophe where every other support possibility fails, you can always hire someone and fix that glitch that bothers you in Apache.

In the case of Microsoft, you are just in the hands of Ballmer. If next quarter he begins to believe that personalized support is a cost center and should be outsourced, your support might suffer a lot in quality. And although it's not that likely, it is a real possibility, and you should take it into account, because in the real world, thinks that are not likely, do happen.

RE: I imagine...

[fshalor]

That this meeting format method may even crop up on some HR person's desk as the next idea to try at m$.

I mean, apache's clearly costing a lot less to make into a good product than IIS. And compare the relative profitability... hehe ...ale and couches at redmond. slashdot article coming next month ...

This reminds me of the PostgreSQL crew...

[tcopeland]

...the fellows that keep the PostgreSQL server farm up and running. It seems like there's always something coming up - new releases, web page tweaks, PGFoundry activity, and all that. Props to Marc Fournier, Dave Page, Andrew Dunstan, and the other fellows who make things run smoothly!

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

[mangu]

will leave 90% of his money to charity on his death. $2 Billion out of his $30 billion net worth

If only I had $28 billion left after I give to charity... And if my children had $3 billion after I died...

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.

Re:WTF

[soulhuntre]

Yeah... cause your quarter is much more useful to starving people than his worthless millions.

Only here can people manage to denegrate something so cool.

Re:WTF

[Reservoir Penguin]

The person earning minumum wage clearly makes a far greater scacrifice than BG. He could donate 90%+ of his wealth and still afford a luxurious lifestyle. He didnt sacrifice a thing.

Re:WTF

[christian.einfeldt]

Hi, After reading the comments here and on the MadPenguin.org forum, I decided that the comment about Gates detracted from the article, mostly because it was too far afield from the main point of the article. My thanks to those who have spotted that passage for the defect that it was. But it was bad writing, not racism. With regard to the comment itself, people in the open source community give code to others plus the documentation to help them implement it in their lives in a way that makes sense for them. The recipients get the code free and clear. They are in control. Gates' money will affect real positive change in the lives of some, no doubt. But his gift doesn't change what Martin Buber called the fundamental "I-thou" nature of his relationship with the recipients. Equals share. The king gives, but remains the king, and the vassals remain vassals. That was my point. Christian Einfeldt

Re:WTF

[orac_in_oz]

Talk about sucked in, tell you what, my name is Bill and I'm going to screw my to the top of the business heap and then toss a little something off to the poor in the 3rd world so I can force people like yourselves to forgive me.
Try and be a little 2 sided about it - obviously its O.K. to give what you can to others less fortunate - just don't expect automatic sympathy on everything from then on.
Trust me, Bill is still well in control of his actions, now it seems he has your support.

Skills

[wombatmobile]

These guys have the skills to be Microsoft millionaires

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

Re:Skills

[rayde]

but you NEED skills! You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills... Microsoft millionares are only people who have great skills.

Re:Skills

[serutan]

I haven't even read the article but I was compelled to come in here and make sure somebody rebutted that statement. I've been a contractor at MS on and off for years, and although there are lots of smart people there, they probably aren't any smarter than you are, and they certainly aren't any less smart than the ones I knew there in 1990 who became millionnaires because of Windows 3.1.

Those folks didn't get rich because they're brilliant programmers, they got rich because Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are brilliant business tycoons. The proof is in the plethora of ex-MS employees whose own startups failed in the late 90s. I was a contractor at one of those too... high rise offices with breathtaking view, high-energy 20-something CEO with breathtaking secretary... product never saw the light of day.

Many of the men who survived sailing with Columbus, Magellan, etc, no doubt considered themselves a cut above the ordinary run of sailors, but how many of them can you name?

Ok, got that off my chest, now to go back and read the Apache article. Looks pretty interesting.

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:Just a note

[superdude72]

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

On a sidenote: Do you realize that if he did this now, he'd still be near the top of the Forbes 500 wealthiest individuals? I actually did the calculation about a year ago. Haven't done it recently, but I imagine he'd still be somewhere near 30th on the list. And this is *after* Microsoft's stock went down due to the dotcom crash and antitrust hearings.

Re:Just a note

[robertjw]

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

I would have to look into it more, but generally this is just to keep the government from getting it. Good Old Uncle Sam would take a HUGE chunk of his estate if he doesn't leave it to charity. I'm sure his wife and children already have money/stock in their own names and won't be hurting for cash. What else is he going to do with it, may as well give it away. Doesn't really make him benevolent does it...

Re:Just a note

[Moderation abuser]

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

Except that money doesn't magically appear. His money came from somewhere and all those somewheres would have spent their money elsewhere making people less poor if it hadn't gone to Microsoft.

Thing is, as we've seen over the last 50 years, when you have trade barriers and subsidies in place all the aid in the world doesn't do shit.

Re:Just a note

[Cyno]

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

Give any slashdotter that kind of cash and find out. I, for one, would be very happy with even $1 million. But I guess nobility is more expensive these days, with inflation and all.

I don't disagree that Bill Gates is noble or a good person or whatever, when compared with MOST capitalists. But Microsoft got its money by rather less than noble means. So, for example, if a drug dealer gives away 90+% of their profits does that make them noble?

Re:Just a note

[Elwood P Dowd]

Ok, even after you suggested that it was satire, I still don't get it. Satire how? Sarcastic how?

Re:Just a note

[Psychotext]

So, for example, if a drug dealer gives away 90+% of their profits does that make them noble?

Wouldn't that entirely depend on what kind of a drug dealer they were? Not all drug dealers are bad, believe it or not! Don't know if pimp would have been a more appropriate analogy, but then again maybe there are good pimps out there too?!?

Hmmm... terrorist anthrax manufacturing puppy killer giving away 90% of their profits? ;)

Re:Just a note

[Ithika]

I think the alarm bells would start ringing as soon as you see the word "brown"... I think that was last used as any form of racial description in the 1920s (despite it being technically more accurate than "black"). It makes me think of the character from The Murder on the Orient Express who looked after "ze little brown babies". People don't speak like that. It would only ever be used to make it *very* obvious the writer was attempting to distance himself from the opinion... something a lot of people failed to pick up on.

Then there's the phrasing "them [...] over there". The giver has no idea where "over there" might be or who "them" are. They are fulfilling a role (of the rich philanthropist) which they have no interest in.

This impression is further strengthened by the fielding calls bit - using charity as a form of self-promotion and absolving (perceived) sins rather than any inner desire to do good.

This is obviously all the opinion of the author (which I am mostly in agreement with, but that's beside the point). It's just rather shocking how few people, who seem to have an otherwise decent grasp of the English language, failed to pick up on these fairly obvious signs. Didn't anyone do literature analysis at school? "What was the author trying to say here?"

Re:Just a note

[swimmar132]

Sure it does. He could decide to spend it all on a private shape ship, or use it to build nuclear weapons and give them to terrorists.

He has lots of options. Giving a ton of cash to AIDS research and education is great of him.

Re:Just a note

[coopex]

I'm pretty sure that all the increases in productivity spawned by the widespread use of computers with Windows has allowed many times the donations beforehand. However, just throwing money at a social problem is *always* doomed to failure, give a man a fish and all.

Re:Just a note

[robertjw]

Sure it does. He could decide to spend it all on a private shape ship, or use it to build nuclear weapons and give them to terrorists.

Ummm... hard to build space ships after you are dead, and again, not giving nukes to terrorists is hardly benevolant. All that proves is he isn't a total monster, or at least doesn't want his children blown up.

Re:Just a note

[smoker2]

Since when does nobility come with a price tag ?
Charity is a private issue., when you get milage from it, it ceases to be creditable.
If you had 40Bn in the bank, you are not going to suffer even if you gave 99% of it away, so don't pretend he is doing the world a favour.
And as for the racist accusation, it was meant to describe the manner in which the "donations" are made, and to whom, and how they actually appear to the rest of us.
"lets pick a disadvantaged group and throw some money at them, that'll make us look good."

Re:Just a note

[elemental23]

If you had 40Bn in the bank, you are not going to suffer even if you gave 99% of it away, so don't pretend he is doing the world a favour.

Please explain again how giving away billions of dollars to charity is not doing the world a favor.

Re:Just a note

[Cyno]

Yeah, good point. :)

Re:Just a note

[loqi]

All that proves is he isn't a total monster

Considering he's a multi-billionaire, and how few multi-billionaires actually do what he's doing, I'd say proving he's not a total monster is fairly impressive.

Re:Just a note

[robertjw]

Considering he's a multi-billionaire, and how few multi-billionaires actually do what he's doing, I'd say proving he's not a total monster is fairly impressive.

Actually, leaving a significant portion of your estate to charity is a common estate planning technique. There are many significantly wealthy people that do it all the time. He's just making a big deal out of it.

Re:Just a note

[lachlan76]

But what if there are good terrorist anthrax manufacturing puppy killers out there?

Re:Just a note

[Psychotext]

The world is a complex, confusing place.

I'm sure they are probably only doing it to put their kids through school / pay for their sick mother's medical bills. :p

Re:FireFox crash...

[temojen]

It's just you crashing. Firefox is fine.

what reputation do you speak of?

[JimmytheGeek]

The one that the community gained through providing the fruits of their labors to the world gratis?

The one that they gained through fewer defects/line of code?

The one they gained for advancing the cause of human freedom? (Encryption, keeping the web out of monopoly hands) 1984 is no nightmare for the proprietary software outfits - BB is a nice cohesive market. Contrast with Carly's ambition: building DRM into every product HP makes...

The OSS community has a great rep for anybody that has heard of it.

I can even hang with some of the poster's intent: seems to me OP feels there is condescenion (based on unconscious racism) on the part of Bill. I don't follow it that closely, so I can't say whether it is justified or not, but I have seen donors incrediby impressed with themselves and unable to identify with the recipients at all.

Re:what reputation do you speak of?

[JimmytheGeek]

So was anything inaccurate or misleading in my post? And why the reflexive dumbass conservative usage of "elitism" ? If elitist means not the dumbest motherfucker in the room, I'm usually guilty.

pgp is a bfd.
an open web is a bfd.
users controlling the hardware they own is a bfd.

You do appear too ignorant/stupid to recognize what they've done for you. They ARE better than you. Sorry.

Can I just say

[Moderation abuser]

Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance really has nothing to do with motorcycle maintenance. It's about Quality with a capital Q.

So can we please have fewer of these "Zen and the art of blahblahblah" books?

Re:Can I just say

[G-funk]

Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance really seems to be about right flaming gibberish. WTF is it with the last 10% of that book? I just can't make it through. I feel like I'm sitting in church with the simpsons hearing a lecture about who begat whom for weeks on end.

That book needs to come with a health warning: "If you haven't studied ancient greek philosophy for 15 years, stop reading at page 192. Book may become airborne, or sit next to toilet gathering dust for decades. Aim away from face."

Re:Can I just say

[razjml]

To be accurate though, Zen and the Art of Archery came out first, and that is about archery. So appropriating it is just fine, even if it was Pirsig's misleading title that made it famous.

Re:Can I just say

[moof1138]

I studied Greek Philosophy for eight years before reading the book (I read it for "fun" in Grad school). I also minored in Religious Studies with a focus in Eastern thought (I read a lot of Zen and Taoist works). I can guarantee you that I hated that steaming heap of ignorant dreck a lot more than you. When I see it on a bookshelf I still get worked up and want to launch into diatribes about his ignorant ham-fisted abuse of Plato, Aristotle, and Greek thought in general, and what an utterly vapid pile of tripe his whole pathetic attempt at a philosophical study was. My wife usually steps in and stops me, though, since not all of those incidents went well.

Re:Can I just say

[eibon]

Thank you! Having studied nothing but IT, I suspected that my intense dislike for the horrible, horrible book that is "ZATAOMM" stemmed from my lack of knowledge of the field he's supposed to be writing about. Good to know that people more knowledgeable than me on the subject me also found it to be somewhat lacking - it may possibly be one of the worst high profile books I've ever read.

Re:Can I just say

[moof1138]

Hello friend, I take this as a very lucky chance that you happen to have noticed me. You see, I take great delight in learning, and I find that little is a better teacher than finding someone who disagrees with me. For from such a person I either learn that I held a view in error, in which case I become the wiser, or I find that in fact my view was not in error, in which case I am more confident that the view I hold can stand up to criticism.

Sadly, at the same time as I am delighted at finding you, I am afraid that while you seem to disagree with me somehow, you seem to not be sharing whatever secret wisdom you have. Please don't hold out on me. If I am ignorant, I beg that you enlighten me with regard to the specific point where my knowledge has failed.

Re:Can I just say

[gujju]

I feel your pain. I've tried to read that book 3 times and have stopped at the same place everytime. I think I have to do what a friend did and that is skip all the philosophy part and just read the motorcycle trip and maintenance part.

Gujju

Collabration is the key word

[xot]

We have a small website that we run for an irc channel.Just a couple of us maintain it and even then it sometimes becomes a pain in the ass to make small decisions and put something new up and things like that. I cant imagine how a website/project like apache is handled smoothly with soooo many people, all volunteers who have day jobs.Its really tough to even remove 2 hours a day from your schedule to dedicate to a project.Amazing. :)

Re:Give a man a fish...

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is E) none of the above. Chairman Bill is a hypocrite who donates a few hundred million dollars, which he won't miss because he deducts it from his income tax, at the same time he gets tens of billions dollars from his illegal monopoly

You really have no clue; first, Bill Gates donated over 25 billion dollars, not "a few hundred million". Second, the amount deductible from taxes is only 30% of the individual's income or 20% in the case of securities (as were most of Gates's donations). And even if he'd be able to deduct all of it, he'd still only save the part of it that's taxable for his income level, which is probably 35%. You have to be pretty silly to say he's giving away 100 dolars to save 35.

Not the actual Apache *software*...

[tedhiltonhead]

Come on... these guys are a bunch of enthused hobbiests working on the infrastructure for Apache -- apparently they were not working on the *software* itself, just the systems that *support* the software in various ways. Most boring, uninspiring article I've ever skimmed.

Re:Not the actual Apache *software*...

[ScytheBlade1]

Well, as long as you didn't read it, I guess...

What?

[Adam9]

No, the Slashdot comments page loads just fine in Firefox.

A bad reputation? But could Bill do this?

[antispam_ben]

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

Presuming it's not just a promise and he actually does it (I'm not familiar with this, I don't study Gates that closely), it still leaves him with hundreds of millions (or billions? - not sure of his current net worth, but it's enough to know it's way up there) of dollars, and still head of the worlds largest and most (financially and number-of-units sold) successful software company.

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

Should the OSS community raise billions of dollars to give to charity? Are none of its members allowed to make "ignorant stupid bullshit statements"?

Do you not consider creating reliable software and making it freely available an admirable and useful goal? I think it IS an admirable and useful goal, and furthermore it's probably the one thing they can do that Bill Gates cannot do.

Re:Apache server apparently now on Linux

[dirkx]

Well spotted - during the colo move the webserver was failed-over to Ajax; a machine donated by HP and sitting in Colo at Surfnet, near Amsterdam.

This machine is indeed a heavy duty HP/red-hat linux server used for ensuring good support on that platform.

Dw.

Mandatory Monty Python reference

[traabil]

Comfy chair? Comfy chair?

Poke him with the soft cusion!

Re:in case it gets slashdotted...

[flynns]

+1, Funny works, in this case.

minotaur is still freebsd

[steve_l]

> uname -a
FreeBSD minotaur.apache.org 4.11-STABLE FreeBSD 4.11-STABLE #8: Mon Mar 21 14:40:31 PST 2005 root@minotaur.apache.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/turb o i386
>

Its interesting how many tier-1 web sites are FreeBSD based. I thought imdb.com was freebsd, but netcraft says Linux again...

Zen and the Art of Media-Sexy-Religion

[notany]

Zen and the Art of Archery was first book in the long line of books named "Zen and the Art of X". In fact this was the only book that had accurate name. It was about Zen and Archery.

Now! I have been practising zen many years (zazen meditation) and I know something about zen's history and I can think myself as an Zen Buddhist on even numbered days. I find this Zen and stuff quite funny (Zen is japanese for Chan which is chinece for Jahna which is sanskrit/pali term meaning meditative concentration). How many people actually know that Zen is actually form of Buddhism!

Zen is probably the most media sexy name any religion or spritual tradition has ever had. How many other religions do you know that have mp3 player named after it.

Creative Mormon mp3 player just don't feel right.

Missing the point

[whyde]

I think you're both to some extent missing the point about the true disconnect between percentage of income and the amount of sacrifice you are making when giving to charity.

Bill Gates, no matter how much money he gives away, even if he donated 99.9% of his net worth to charity, would still not ever worry about whether he's going to be able to buy food that day.

I'm sure Bill doesn't even think about the buying of food... he just eats--anything and anywhere he wants.

A person hovering near the poverty line has a genuine *sacrifice* to make regarding charity, food, medicine, shelter, etc.

Bill does not, and that's the real point.

CURIOUS...

[CaptainPinko]

what would happen if that was recalculated as a % of disposable income?

Re:in case it gets slashdotted...

[loqi]

And /. said, "Let there be +1, Underrated"