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Apache considered harmful

mikealrogers.com

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Re: Apache considered harmful

#141

Post by reissbaker »

sliverstorm wrote: post #31
visural wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Trouble is, their existing developers and projects seem to be doing fine with SVN. Don't forget those are the most important people, the workhorses you already have- not the flighty young birds you hope to one day trap. Sure, there is always the future to think about, but the future isn't happening a week from now. They have time to watch Git grow and wait until the time is right.

Except that the existing developers aren't all doing fine with SVN. As referenced in the post, both CouchDB and PhoneGap (existing "workhorse" Apache projects!) prefer to use git, but have met with strong opposition from the ASF.

The time to allow for Git usage is already here. It's not just pie in the sky forecasting -- existing projects are being held back by bureaucracy.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#142

Post by EdiX »

nirvdrum wrote: post #136
EdiX wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please, do elaborate! In detail, why is git better than subversion if all I need is a central repository for a few people working at a company on one site, sitting in the same room with permanent network access. No distributed or remote or on-the-go development, no forks. Because with svn you end up having dirty working directories that go uncommitted for days because committing would break the build, as a result:…

SVN has branches, too. The problem it had was with merge-tracking and that's about when everyone hopped over to git (myself included). But that hasn't been an issue for a couple years now. By all means, stick with git if you prefer it, but release some of the older criticisms as they've been addressed by the SVN team.

> SVN has branches, too.

I don't think I have said it doesn't

Re: Apache considered harmful

#143

Post by mikey_p »

nirvdrum wrote: post #134
MattRogish wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good point. Anyone who starts an open-source project should, from day one, have a vetted Contributor License Agreement and ONLY accept pull requests that include signed CLAs (or from a person who has one on file).

It'd be kinda nifty if GitHub had this built-in. I personally don't require CLAs for every project because it can be onerous. But at the least I try to pick a license that wouldn't allow for submarine patent claims.

I've wondered for years why GitHub doesn't provide a license field as part of the repo along side name and description. I've been known to pester people after they point me to their repo, and ask them to add a license before I'll use their code. Automating CLAs would be a dream.

GitHub, are you listening?

Re: Apache considered harmful

#144

Post by tptacek »

wladimir wrote: post #75
tptacek wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, afai…

"Me of all people"? People sure are zealous about their version control systems. For the record, I use git. But I don't really give a shit about it. For most of my career, I used CVS.

Git is neat, and I like it, but I'm not planning on studying its internals any time soon.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#145

Post by bct »

reissbaker wrote: post #140
bct wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4. Condescension. "It's impressive for what it is" ... (but "what it is" is "just a sandbox") You're jumping at shadows and putting words into his mouth. What he said was: > 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. Which doesn't imply the same condescenscion as your "quote".

The very next line: Confusing the Apache Software Foundation for your coding sandbox ...

But he does not say "just a sandbox", or otherwise imply that a "coding sandbox" is less valuable than a non-profit organization. They're different things.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#146

Post by nirvdrum »

EdiX wrote: post #142
nirvdrum wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SVN has branches, too. The problem it had was with merge-tracking and that's about when everyone hopped over to git (myself included). But that hasn't been an issue for a couple years now. By all means, stick with git if you prefer it, but release some of the older criticisms as they've been addressed by the SVN team.

> SVN has branches, too. I don't think I have said it doesn't

You certainly implied a branch-free workflow. Otherwise why would you have a dirty local workspace and multiple checkouts? And why would committing break a build? I'm unaware of any CI server configured to build every branch in the SVN tree.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#147

Post by hesselink »

nirvdrum wrote: post #120
mcantelon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not terribly great when you have large files in the system. You end up with a huge repository on disk as those files change. But more importantly, you can't do a partial checkout of a particular path. I think I read that that'll be coming to git, which would be fantastic.

Actually, you can, with sparse checkouts. They've been in since git 1.7, if I remember correctly. It's not very user friendly yet, and you do retain the entire path from the repository root. See for example here: http://vmiklos.hu/blog/sparse-checkout-example-in-git-1-7

Re: Apache considered harmful

#148

Post by pyrhho »

As an aside, the Clay Shirky quote ("Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.") was new to me, but puts the RIAA/MPAA pretty much perfectly into perspective. Not really related to the article, but it clicked as I was reading.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#149

Post by msbarnett »

aristedes wrote: post #85

Where to start with this blog post? It appears that the author has seen a couple of private emails and thinks he knows all about the internal workings of the Apache Foundation. He is wrong on so many counts. His entire dislike of the Apache Foundation appears to be predicated on the fact that the organisation did not force every project to move to this blogger's favourite version control tool. Making a change as larg…

> 2. Legal change. Right now there is a simple process for signing off intellectual property for contributions which were merged from external contributors (who have not signed a release). That changes with git and becomes more complex. There are solutions, but they require careful planning.

I'm curious as to how exactly you feel git impacts on Legal processes versus the use of svn. I'd expect that the choice of tools and the legal issues surrounded merges made by those tools should be completely orthogonal.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#150

Post by kiba »

kahawe wrote: post #83
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…

Spot on, excellent points and I could not help but wonder about the article... most people would consider "apache" to be synonymous for the httpd and not the ASF, so the headline is clearly fishing. Then, OP argues ASF's processes are broken and a github project with one maintainer is so much easier... you really have to consider the scale of the average sourceforge (back in the day) project vs. apache even back then…

I am not sure what the use case differences are. To me, git is simply a better version of svn.
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