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Apache considered harmful

mikealrogers.com

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Re: Apache considered harmful

#71

Post by mtts »

mcantelon wrote: post #53
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…

>there are some serious drawbacks for use of git Such as?

It's not centralized.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#72

Post by marshray »

mtts wrote: post #71
mcantelon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there are some serious drawbacks for use of git Such as?

It's not centralized.

I've used centralized SCCSs for years and years. I guess I don't see why you can't use git as one, just have everybody agree to push to a central repository on a server.

There is the issue of the size of the local copy, but it doesn't seem to be a big deal in practice. I just don't check in the heavyweight frameworks as vendor drops into the same repos as I use for my own, smaller, codebase.

Granted, I'm scared to death of ending up in a merge-gone-wrong hell situation trying to do stuff that I'm very familiar with in Perforce. But I'm happy being a git newb taking baby steps a bit longer.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#73

Post by rimantas »

marshray wrote: post #72
mtts wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not centralized.

I've used centralized SCCSs for years and years. I guess I don't see why you can't use git as one, just have everybody agree to push to a central repository on a server. There is the issue of the size of the local copy, but it doesn't seem to be a big deal in practice. I just don't check in the heavyweight frameworks as vendor drops into the same repos as I use for my own, smaller, codebase. Granted, I'm scared to de…

There is no issue with the size of the local copy. Most of the times the entire git repo is smaller than single SVN checkout.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#74

Post by ck2 »

I wish at least one open source replacement adopted .htaccess (and httpd.conf) compatibility.

Litespeed is the only product in existence which has made switching over from a complex Apache install a one hour affair, but it's free version is limited to 5 hosts and the commercial version can only be justified in a profitable environment.

The performance difference is breathtaking however.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#75

Post by wladimir »

tptacek wrote: post #29
buff-a wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason apache can't maintain its own "legally authorative" git repo. Nothing in the authors post suggest that he is confusing the ASF with a "coding sandbox". Making that claim suggests to me that you are invested in the alternative and not thinking objectively. And I disagree about subversion being "made for Apache in the way Linus made git for Linux". Subversion is an utterly derivative implementation of…

I'm not totally familiar with the issues here, but from an earlier perusal of the email threads on this, it seems like ASF's concern involves things like git's ability to edit the repository history.

You of all people should know that GIT history consists of a write-only log which is maintained using cryptographic hashes. If you edit one commit (even the metadata) you have to rewrite history, and all the hashes for commits after it change.

People will notice, and most importantly, everyone will still have the old commit chain locally.

This means that even the server cannot arbitrarily edit history. With SVN, afaik this is possible by manipulating the database.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#76

Post by ternaryoperator »

sanxiyn wrote: post #64
apike wrote: post #35

The ASF is the first home that comes to mind when an successful open-source project needs independent stewardship. Often when a company wants to "spin off" an open source project, they turn to Apache. What alternative organizations fill this need in a more lightweight fashion? Most other umbrella open source organizations I know of focus on copyleft and other issues that can be hostile to commercial interests.

Software Freedom Conservancy. http://sfconservancy.org/ Conservancy doesn't care about licenses as long as they are free. For example, jQuery (MIT license) is part of Conservancy. Conservancy members include prominent projects such as Boost, BusyBox, Darcs, Git, Inkscape, jQuery, Mercurial, PyPy, Samba, Selenium, Squeak, uClibc, Wine.

"Conservancy doesn't care about licenses as long as they are free."

They do care about licenses and license terms are part of the requirements for application. The project license must be either free (per FSF) or open (per OSI). Docs must be made available under Creative Commons licenses. And the project must be completely non-profit. (All these requirements must be met.)

That being said, you're right, it's a good home without the politics discussed here.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#77

Post by nl »

Legion wrote: post #26
ww520 wrote: post #13

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.

Don't get caught up on GitHub specifically. GitHub is just the most popular example of how projects don't need Apache to host them anymore, yet Apache still expects to do so, and worse, expects to assert a lot of restriction over it. The point is, that is at odds with what the community wants and needs. As the author pointed out, ten years ago, rolling your own SCM hosting was a big pain. Now, it's not, partly becaus…

In that respect, they're still solving a problem nobody has anymore, and that was the point the author was making.

That wasn't the author's point at all.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#78

Post by mtts »

marshray wrote: post #72
mtts wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not centralized.

I've used centralized SCCSs for years and years. I guess I don't see why you can't use git as one, just have everybody agree to push to a central repository on a server. There is the issue of the size of the local copy, but it doesn't seem to be a big deal in practice. I just don't check in the heavyweight frameworks as vendor drops into the same repos as I use for my own, smaller, codebase. Granted, I'm scared to de…

You can, but SVN more or less forces you to.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#79

Post by bad_user »

linuxhansl wrote: post #63

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 sub…

Ever since I started using Git, I would never go back to SVN, because branching and merging is now an essential part of my workflow, even on small project on which I work by myself with no other contributers.

     just as with Linux there is/are some de-facto
     master branch(es)
Well yeah, but I don't get how that's an argument for SVN. The thing I like about Git is that branching is now really, really cheap. You can now keep track of dozens of local branches with experiments that you don't have to push to master. You can now share your experiments with a colleague and push to master whenever something is actually ready. You can now also ban commits to the main repository that haven't been code-reviewed (something which is a PITA with SVN). And so on and so forth.

    I don't get the religious opposition against one 
    version control system vs another.
Even though I prefer Git, neither do I, especially since you can just use the Git-SVN bridge :) I've used it for more than a year, it does has some quirks, but it works fine.

Also, the Apache Foundation does its job and does it well. There's room for both anarchy and bureaucracy and both are needed.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#80

Post by bergie »

blasdel wrote: post #33
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…

The ASF isn't where projects go to "grow up". It's mostly where companies like IBM go to dump their enterprisey Java frameworks so they can be marketed as ostensibly open to outside developers.

Nope, ASF actually provides and enforces a reasonable governance model for projects it adopts.

I wrote something on why this is important: http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/open_source-free_software-what_we_...

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