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Apache considered harmful

mikealrogers.com

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Re: Apache considered harmful

#11

Post by chaseideas »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #4

I'm curious as to the average age of committers by project under the ASF vs. popular projects on github. My hypothesis is that they would be older by a significant margin.

I would agree with that hypothesis.

What I've observed from running http://www.Apache.com for several years, is indeed an older crowd (40+) by a nice margin compared to a lot of the younger projects floating around that are generating a ton of buzz.

It's been much more rare in my experience to see a 20 something hipster programmer seriously diving in with the ASF. I'm generalizing though of course...

The type of questions and people I interact with through that project are older engineering types, and those with a long history in the programming and computer scene. Usually with an old-school *nix approach to things.

Just wanted to chime in with that, since like stated elsewhere in the HN comments, I think this blog post is more about the organization structure and members of the ASF than the actual Apache Web Server project... which we all love so dearly. ;)

- Chase

Re: Apache considered harmful

#12

Post by jerf »

jaaron wrote: post #10
jowiar wrote: post #8

I second this thoroughly. I was was almost driven to start blogging last week by ASF's poor job of maintaining its projects. There was a small bug in Solr. I was not the first to find this bug, and someone had not only reported the bug, but filed a patch on the bug tracker a year and a half ago. The patch was never merged in, nobody provided any feedback as to why the patch wasn't merged in. One huge plus with Github…

Then fork it. It's open source for a reason. Or raise a fuss on the mailing list. That's how open source works.

While forking is a solution, it hardly precludes discussion of other less drastic potential solutions to the problem at hand. It does nicely bound the maximum negative impact that Apache social problems can cause, though.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#13

Post by ww520 »

I'm curious how does it harm anything? Did it kill any puppies? Maybe it's inefficient but harmful?

Also remember GitHub is a for profit company. Its allowance for Open Source hosting is a marketing tactic. Anytime they feel the marketing value is not there, they will shut it down. Not that I'm against GitHub. It's a great company for itself. But comparing the Apache to GitHub is like comparing apple and orange.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#14

Post by v21 »

jaaron wrote: post #10
jowiar wrote: post #8

I second this thoroughly. I was was almost driven to start blogging last week by ASF's poor job of maintaining its projects. There was a small bug in Solr. I was not the first to find this bug, and someone had not only reported the bug, but filed a patch on the bug tracker a year and a half ago. The patch was never merged in, nobody provided any feedback as to why the patch wasn't merged in. One huge plus with Github…

Then fork it. It's open source for a reason. Or raise a fuss on the mailing list. That's how open source works.

I'm not the OP, but if something raises my ire almost enough to make me blog about it, it probably isn't going to irritate me enough to fork a large software project. But the lower the bar for submitting a patch, the more likely you'll get one. And the more everyone will benefit from it (assuming it's a net positive patch).

Re: Apache considered harmful

#15

Post by jaaron »

Ok, there's a lot to cover here.

First off, the Apache Software Foundation isn't trying to absorb anyone or anything. Projects and people come to the ASF. It's a specific policy of the Foundation to NOT solicit projects. If someone says they're representing Apache and soliciting projects, they're wrong.

Secondly, Apache is very opinionated about how projects should be run. This comes from years of experience as not only a successful project, but as a successful non-profit organization overseeing dozens of projects. If a community doesn't like the ASF's style or rules (such as no dictators, benevolent or otherwise), they don't need to be there. No one wants to keep projects hostage. Part of the point of the Incubator is to get this figured out earlier than later.

Thirdly, about git and subversion. First off, there's increasing support for git at Apache (see http://git.apache.org/) but there are some serious drawbacks for use of git. Consider this: subversion was practically made for Apache in the way Linus made git for Linux. With that in mind, subversion isn't going anywhere at the ASF. Some of the rational is just plain stubbornness, but some of it goes straight to the core values of the Foundation.

Apache has become, for better or worse, the place where lots of projects go when they grow up. Growing up is hard to do. It's not fun. You have to do things like get a job, pay taxes, etc. When a project grows up, people start caring about who contributed what, under which license and making sure every line of code is legit. A lot of engineers don't care about this, but businesses and their lawyers do. A lot of the Apache Foundation "bureaucracy" is to handle this oversight and paperwork.

Git is an impressive tool and github is awesome for what it is, but it's not a non-profit foundation and it won't replace one. Confusing the Apache Software Foundation for your coding sandbox only suggests you don't understand the true purpose of either.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#16

Post by jaaron »

jerf wrote: post #12
jaaron wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then fork it. It's open source for a reason. Or raise a fuss on the mailing list. That's how open source works.

While forking is a solution, it hardly precludes discussion of other less drastic potential solutions to the problem at hand. It does nicely bound the maximum negative impact that Apache social problems can cause, though.

If you're using git, as the OP suggets, then you're going to fork it just to work on it. Forking isn't dramatic. Code is open source for a reason. If you have a critical bug in code you need running in your infrastructure, take ownership of it and fork it. Then do the dirty work to get the patch pushed back up stream.

If the maintainers really aren't doing what they volunteered to do, then volunteer yourself and get it done.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#17

Post by compay »

Hate to be the grammar cop here, but the consistent misspelling of "its" in the article is distracting. If the author is here, could you please fix that? It's taking away from a very well-written and insightful piece of writing.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#18

Post by tolmasky »

jaaron wrote: post #10
jowiar wrote: post #8

I second this thoroughly. I was was almost driven to start blogging last week by ASF's poor job of maintaining its projects. There was a small bug in Solr. I was not the first to find this bug, and someone had not only reported the bug, but filed a patch on the bug tracker a year and a half ago. The patch was never merged in, nobody provided any feedback as to why the patch wasn't merged in. One huge plus with Github…

Then fork it. It's open source for a reason. Or raise a fuss on the mailing list. That's how open source works.

It can sometimes be hard to fork a project just for a patch to one simple bug. Once again, GitHub really shines here: you can go to any project and see all of its pull requests, so you don't have to go hunting for patches attached to bugs, and it becomes quite clear and public when a project isn't properly or expediently merging in patches.

The GitHub layout is really telling of the new open source philosophy. They put the code front and center (main page), and right above it show you with first class status all the bugs it has (issues link) as well as all the proposed changes (pull requests link).

Re: Apache considered harmful

#19

Post by visural »

jaaron wrote: post #15

Ok, there's a lot to cover here. First off, the Apache Software Foundation isn't trying to absorb anyone or anything. Projects and people come to the ASF. It's a specific policy of the Foundation to NOT solicit projects. If someone says they're representing Apache and soliciting projects, they're wrong. Secondly, Apache is very opinionated about how projects should be run. This comes from years of experience as not o…

While correct, it would benefit Apache in the long run to foster better communities and tools for their projects to grow. While they provide value in terms of the protection/process/management it's all for nothing if the developers can't collaborate effectively.

GitHub has changed many developer's UX of opensource development to the point that they don't want to do it "the old way". Apache should be looking to grow in this direction to keep their developers and projects engaged.

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