Apache considered harmful

GitHub isn't a new version of Apache - GitHub is a new version of SourceForge. I don't think that even 10 years ago anyone with a line (or 100 lines) of code can set up their own Apache projects.

10 years ago if you needed free SCM, you'd use SourceForge, not Apache. I don't think it would've been that big of a pain even then.

GitHub projects don't necessarily come with its own community with diverse contributors, whereas Apache projects require it.

I am not entirely sure what the article is trying to get at. Politics and law in open source are real and needed, especially in the face of software patents.

Many contributors develop open source code as part of their paid work, as such it is quite important to establish the legal framework to allow contributing the companies IP to an open source project (which includes necessary patent grants). Comitters need to submit an Individual Contributor License Agreement stating that they have the legal right to contribute the code they're contributing. If worked on contributions as employee the company also typically needs to submit a corporate contributor license agreement.

Like it or not (and I personally do very much not like it), you cannot just upload some code somewhere these days.

As such the even FSF is an extremely important organization. Much frowned upon and usually not understood. Open source licenses would not work without Copyright Law, most developers don't know or understand that.

And the whole thing of svn vs git. Personally I don't get it. I use svn when it makes sense and I use git when that makes sense, just like I use Java/Ruby/C++/Python/Javascript/Closure/Scala/whatever or GoogleDocs/PDF/OpenOffice/MS Word(yes) when needed.

The main feature I need from VCS are atomic commits. So CVS is out for me for that reason. Sure git's nice and all, but I spend 99.9% of my time writing or thinking about code and software architecture, not tinkering with my VCS, so as long as it works, I don't care. Easy forking and branching is nice too. In the end, though, just as with Linux there is/are some de-facto master branch(es) somewhere from which "releases" are cut.

Currently with apache it's more convenient to use svn, so I do that.

I don't get the religious opposition against one version control system vs another.

Disclaimer: Apache committer here.

"How does this help Apache or its projects?"

The Apache Foundation is what you make of it. It will not change just because you post to your blog, but it will change if you engage the committer and membership population, build a consensus around your ideas and volunteer to do the actual work to make the changes happen.

No one will force you to do such work and if you don't want to do it, then you're not obligated to do so. No one will be upset if you, I or anyone else leaves the Foundation. It's cool. We're all here at-will, volunteering effort and code.

Apache cannot be everything to everyone, despite how much it is pulled to be so. Right now it fills a particular important role in the open source and larger software ecosystems. It's in that position due to both historical precedent as well as intentional decisions by the membership body.

But trust me, no one in Apache is ever, ever completely satisfied with the Foundation. That's to be expected -- the organization is driven by the compromises of a large group of people with different ideas and expectations. To balance between the chaos of constant change and the death of no change, the organization has grown guidelines and rules from the collected wisdom of its membership. This gives us at least some framework by which to evolve.

As for hosting code, there have been proposals at time for Apache to push the code hosting to some other organization. Once it was SourceForge, then Google Code, now Github. Of course, it's a tricky situation as the Foundation has particular requirements and wants to know its code will be around for decades. Moreover, infra team is constantly understaffed and thus are a very, very conservative bunch. We've seen way too many people jump in with a great idea and then leave maintenance to someone else. They're stubborn for a reason.

And perhaps Apache and Github are incompatible. So what? Github is a tool. It's incompatible with lots and lots of organizations and ways of doing things. The FSF has its rules and culture. Same with the Linux kernel, distros and desktops like KDE and Gnome. Android is different too. Not all of those mesh with Github and that's fine.

mike,

I don't understand why this response is "depressing" and characterizing the reply as "about git" is, frankly, not representative of the post I just read.

There isn't One Answer. The point is, you have plenty of alternatives. I don't know why the patch hasn't been applied. I know how I can find out though: I can join the developer mailing list and ask. If that doesn't work, I can track down a developer directly (they're not hard to find once you're on the mailing list) and bug 'em until I get a decent response. If it's clear the maintainers aren't doing their job, raise hell on the mailing lists and push to become a committer yourself so you can do the job right.

While that's happening, you can take the approach of maintaining your own patches so that you're not beholden to anyone in particular.

The whole point of open source is empowerment, not entitlement. No one is entitled to get any bug fixed. It's great when it happens but ultimately, everyone is empowered to make things happen themselves.