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Ask Apache Software Chairman Greg Stein
Here's a man who obviously has his finger on the pulse of open source software development. I mean, who hasn't heard of Apache? His work history is interesting, too: He's moved from Microsoft to CollabNet to Google. And he's not shy about speaking his mind about open source, as shown in this ZDNet blog entry. Please try to confine yourself to one question per post. (If you have more than one question, post more than once.) We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to Greg tomorrow and run his answers when we get them back.
Greg,
What are your thoughts on Apache's direction in regards to the new roaming AJAX desktops we keep hearing about -- what are some of the limitations you foresee in the overall untethered computing experience?
Kind Regards,
Scotty
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Why do you find it neccesary to help companies like CentOS hack rural town websites?
In 5-10 years, most of the software you use will be free
Does that include software for my flying car?
Why does everything the Apache foundation release these days have to be Java based?
I use http but thats about it. I have looked at the other Apache software but always been offputting to have to set up Java with all the classpaths etc.
Whats wrong with C or C++? Its portable and easy to install and run.
This isnt a troll, although it might look like one....
Does this hack my website? http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/27/ 135221
I'd like to know what the continuing direction is going to be for support on 1.x - which is being used by the majority of webservers I see - and 2.x - which is what is being distributed in most recent operating system packages, such as Linux. Are you planning on supporting 1.x forever or ending support at some point and forging on with 2.x?
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Tuttle OK Mayor Jerry Taylor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Taylor
I love random hex numbers! Just like this one, 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
Greg,
Do you believe that open source projects should always remain in the public domain- ie. that no open source projects should turn commercial?
From TFB: "I predict that in 5-10 years most of the software you use will be free."
Does he also predict that in 5-10 years most software development position will be gone or significantly value reduced the also?
The obvious answer is no, the market will find a balance between free and non-free business models to support further development. Some one has to pay the developers to put bread on the table. Someone has to pay the advertisers to get the word out about the project. Someone has to pay the management to keep the project on task and schedule.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Why aren't more people using version 2 apache?
Given your opinion that "in 5-10 years most of the software you use will be free." How do you see the future of software development business plans? Will every software development company depend on the profits of their support department for funding?
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Free & Open software is great on the most part, but developers need to pay bills too. If all software was free and open, who'd want to learn to make it?
The Apache license allows for non or commercial distribution of Apache or a direct derivetive (with attribution), but I don't see any other products or projcts based on the Apache codebase (I know there are some) that are nearly as popular as Apache itself. Can you answer why this is?
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Can you slip a few "accidental" holes into 1.x so there's an excuse to bump the version number all the way to 1.3.37? Please?
Greg,
After reading your homepage and following many of the links, it's obvious that you are a pretty solid game enthusiast -- from your work on MUDs, playing MTG in your younger years, to enjoyment of TES:Oblivion. Do you think that open-source software has a significant role to play in mass-market gaming? Do you think that opening the code of games would enhance game devlopment?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Apache Chief.
In which case I'd ask him two things. First, if he has any juicy gossip about the other Superfriends. And second, if he could have other powers instead of the one he's got, would he want them, and if so, what would they be?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The Apache Software Foundation has a huge number of Java projects going under the Jakarta project. Where do you see Java, and the ASF's Java projects, in 5 or 10 years?
How do you respond to critics who allege that Apache has gotten bigger and more bloated in recent releases, particularly the 2.x series?
will there ever be an Apache live cd distro?
what i'd like to see is a live bootable cd for a server that the first time you boot from it with a clean storage drive, it asks for setup preferences and writes those to the hard drive or flash drive.
on subsequent boots it reads those preferences from the hard drive and sets itself up automaticly.
Enjoy Every Sandwich
Is your HTTP server the most popular of your foundation's products? If so, why do you think it is? If not, which product is your foundation's most popular and what edge does it have over its competition?
/* Not a question for Greg */ Greg Stein is a darn good man and Apache is darn good software. Sadly some stupid people are showing how stupid they are by posting there ignorance. e.g. I AM A FISH!; Why do you find it neccesary to help companies like CentOS hack rural town websites?; and so on... Children, please grow up. It just isn't funny anymore. :-(
Greg,
Have you ever looked in the mirror in the morning? Seriously dude, you look like a roadie for Ratt. I think I saw you behind a guitar center once drink a beer on top of a Camaro? Seriously, what gives with the hair, clothes, etc? Someone needs to open source some style and ftp it to you pronto I guess. Take care of yourself.
Hey, Greg... why did you choose the dorky online handle, "deathblade"? ;-)
I suspect this guy probably hasn't.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
I am currious how you balance work and familly life. I find it difficult to keep up with all the Apache projects because they grow at such a fast rate. Do you try to keep up on all the Apache projects? How much time do you spend learning vs working on projects? Do you tend to work on weekends and holidays? What do you do with your spare time and do you have enough of it?
Most folks want small footprint, speedy modules. C would be a better language for Apache projects. Apache is written in C and is small and fast.
Corner micorsoft with a larger marketshare and a superior product.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
So we all know that you have an affinity for Manhattans, but what's your favorite scotch? Favorite as in "stuck on a desert island with one bottle of scotch".
...for the money, anyway? We do it because we like it, because we are of an inquisitive character who likes to learn and figure out how stuff (maths, physics, electronics, computers, ...) works.
Everyone should just get a real job! *ducks* (I tend to say that about all things I like doing, since I consider it more fun than work and gladly do it for free.)
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Do you think it's appropriate to use/borrow the name of a people for a large visible public project/undertaking without asking their permission first? Have you ever asked a representative of the Apache people what they think about the fact that their name is used for your project?
African or European?
-- NeonRonin
Why is it that Apache always seems to be taking over my Corporate web site? I never used to complain before thinking it was just one of those "Computer things" but after the City Manager of Tuttle Oaklahoma has spoken out about this issue I feel I can keep silent no longer.
Please Mr Apache, please stop hacking my website.
Why don't you get a haircut?
What do you think of the newer smaller competitors? Particularly LightTPD. Would it be worthwhile for Apache to work to "slim down"? While Apache is seen by many as a slimmer alternative to more monolithic servers like IIS, it seems that it may be vulnerable to the even smaller alternatives. And this new round of competitors is nearly as featureful and extendable as Apache. What can Apache do to stay current and competitive?
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Greg,
Your xbox blog is legendary (http://xboxgamer.blogspot.com/). I know you still have a gaming PC for MMORPGs; why aren't they all running on the xbox Live network? What's it going to take before we give up gaming PCs for consoles? It seems like MMORPGs are the last holdout, but I can't figure out why they're holding out.
Apache seems to have a policy against programmers having their name in a comment for the code they contribute to. For much of the open source world, the code is a major medium that programmers express ideas like a canvas is the medium a painter expresses themselves or the pages of book is for a writer. Admittedly programming is more of an engineering skill than it is an artistic skill but well written code still takes an artistic eye. Discouraging a programmer from identifying their contributions is in effect discouraging them from taking the utmost pride in their craft. Why does Apache remove incentives for people to do their best work?
Yeah, just imagine he'd seen a bunch of dangerous looking Mohawks or something. He might think it was some sort of hack attack..... [ducks]
[exit stage left]
Be nice to people on the way up. You will meet them again on your way down!
We often read about managment problems with large software projects. The Apache web server is a large, well maintained and stable platform. This obviously didn't happen by accident but as a result of the team all knowing what they were supposed to do.
With this in mind, what are your personal top ten management do's and dont's with regard to large software projects?
Regards,
-ed
Be nice to people on the way up. You will meet them again on your way down!
Any relation to Ben? Can we win your money?
...you or Brian?
Why do you believe that your move from a Free licence to a non-Free licence laden with unenforceable legalese was a good idea, and when are you going to revert to a Free licence?
Greg,
When's the last time you had a good idle? I bogleg at the thought of how far you've come since those days.
(Sorry, only Greg and a few others will have any clue what I'm talking about. 2001 called, and it wants it's "whips out his Python" jokes back, along with 46 "bog" and five Deathblade emotes, by the way.)
-Ed Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.
Greg, I am intrigued to know your reaction to Zeus.com's claims (http://www.zeus.com/products/zws/features) that there are more websites running Zeus Web Server than Apache. Not sure where they got their numbers, but Netcraft (http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_surv ey.html) definitely does not agree...
My thumbs up to that statement. Add in why installation of Tomcat/JK is so unnecessarily complicated over core apache, and plays so poorly with other modules.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Wait for 2.2 (currently 2.1) to go stable.
The lingering daemon functionality that was provided externally in 1.3 is back and in core 2.2.
This will be a huge boost for large providers to serve more connections and provide good reason.
At present, I recommend 2.x just because it's closer to 2.2 (and hence involves less configuration and setup quirks later on)- They're about equal now with the prefork.
I'd say that people expected a huge benefit, but didn't quite get it right away. In a Web server, it just needs to work, and both worked- so why upgrade for slightly slower performance and no additional features. What people failed to realize is that changing this framework around provides long-term growth and renews the project to increase its extensibility such as module ordering in the long term.
As that long term comes now, you'll see a lot more move to that as the gains keep showing up, now that the framework is stable.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Has any thought been put into doing what FastCGI has done, only within Apache and its modules rather than between Apache and some other program? This could reduce the core server size, allow threading and other fun where it wasn't before, and use resources more efficiently, passing proper apache structures to a module server that could pass that same structure to PHP/Perl/TK/etc and back again?
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Hi Greg,
After a while in load balance hell and writing ugly perl code to replicate sites dynamically I wonder if we will ever see
such a thing as a "distributed scalable web server"? Apache seems a very self contained, dare I say "brittle" monolith. Do you see scalability as a weakness and if not what is in the pipeline to handle sites that get a few hundred hits a month and then get suddenly get Slashdotted for a 24 hour period?
It seems to me that there are more newbies to Linux every day. With Apache 2 being such an important Web services platform, it appears very powerful but not all that easy for a person new to Apache to set up. Why kind of efforts do you plan to undertake to improve the set-up process for Windows and Linux flavors?
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
Java configuration and classpaths really aren't all that complicated once you get the hang of them.
On the flipside, I've never found native stuff to be all that easy. Sure if you are running Linux x86 then most stuff just compiles out of the box, but try compiling oss stuff on windows, or perhaps trying to get an oss library to run on an embedded platform - it can be a royal pain in the ass. My experience suggests that third party libraries are a pain in C unless you work with them at source level - try getting static output from gcc to be accepted by visual studio's linker.
Once you get your head round Java it just seems to work. I've developed web applications on a windows laptop and deployed them on a 32-way solaris box. I've developed swing apps on linux and ran them on mac. I've created mobile applications on solaris and deployed them on my cellphone.
Plus Java development seems to run faster, although i do a lot more java than I do C so i'm undoubtedly better at it.
Any relation to Ben or Franken Stein?
Right now it isn't easy to quickly deploy Jetspeed 2 into Tomcat, unless you go for the pre-installed one. I'd love to see a PostgreSQL/insert-other-sql/OpenLDAP backed configuration system and a WAR file so that JS2 could be deployed easier. It really does look like a killer product.
It could make a compelling replacement for systems like Campus Pipeline.
Can you briefly (like 100 words or less, without technobabble) say why the Apache project has been such a quiet success and would you please do that, if you can? And if that doesn't seem possible, could you briefly say why?
I'm looking for a couple of things: first, you are an expert in FOSS and your opinion about whether managing communications was more significant than managing bugs, etc, would be of great personal interest. But I'm also hoping for something pithy that can be used at a college Board of Directors meeting to guide the focus of discussions about FOSS adoption to more useful areas than the FUD FUD FUD of ToC arguments.
Hi Greg,
How do you think Apache will stand up to Microsoft's Vista Server?
All Your Base Are Belong To Us!!! chown -r us
Really? Let me see! *takes a look*. Wow you're right! You're running the windows server! Shame on you. I think you should call tech support. Nice logo btw. EDIT: Hey, with that in mind, I could fix the crap there for you b4 you more to apache or apple's server... No? Ok then. :)
All Your Base Are Belong To Us!!! chown -r us
Being the chairman of such an important and successful project such as apache, how much money do you sleep on at night with how many beautiful women?
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
The Apache license itself has some interesting software patent provisions, but the apache.org web site doesn't seem to have much in the way of an official position or policy statement on software patents. Can you talk about Apache's attitude (if any) toward software patents, and maybe business method patents as well? Do any current patents interfere with the Foundation's work?
Yo,
-Karl
http://www.red-bean.com/kfogel
Why, four months after the release of 2.2, are there still no Windows binaries posted on Apache.org?
It seems like a much longer delay than in the past.
Is it because the code is being updated to compile under VC8? (a huge undertaking by the look of it) Is it because of the relatively buggy new version of InstallShield?
Is it related to the status of third party modules?
I managed to compile 2.2 with ssl on VC6 with a little effort, been running it on our site for over 3 months now, it seems just fine. I compiled recent php versions modules (thread safety, I know...) and eAccelerator to work with it. I managed to produce an acceptable msi installer package as well.
I'm curious as to why the long delay, I'm beginning to wonder if Apache may be discontinuing support for windows in future versions?
(aside: I also agree with other comments above that C is a zillion times more portable than java...)
What are your thoughts on the best Scotches out there? Are you still a Glenfiddich fan, or have you discovered anything that is a better compliment to open source software development?
Jerry Taylor, the now famous city manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma, clearly http://centos.hughesjr.com/testing/noindex_new.htm l
Greg, How's your brother, Ben, doing and whatever happened to his game show?
Google uses tons of open source software, yet they also routinely file patent applications and own many patents. While Red Hat also owns patents, they have also pledged to never use them against any open source software. Will Google ever do the same?
Greg; Bro! would a car based mesh network device (non internet dependent) run the same version of Apache as a normal webserver or not? what changes would have to be configured and is this a major project? my friends want to network with each other, not the internet, for a variety of reasons when we cruise and run 12VDC mode. i am just looking for a server to find and mesh WIFI-like with all the other car based dudes when we drive. that way, we would have a system that is free of the ISP world and make it work ourselves. this idea has balls.