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Apache considered harmful

mikealrogers.com

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Re: Apache considered harmful

#21

Post by jerf »

jaaron wrote: post #16
jerf wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry, explain to me clearly why that is the One Answer and we must stop discussing alternatives?

You're answering a question I'm not even remotely asking.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#22

Post by mef »

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…

what about Subversion goes "straight to the core" of the ASF that is not also true about git?

Re: Apache considered harmful

#23

Post by buff-a »

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'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 any server based VCS in existence, where as git is an example of truly creative thought (not just from Linus) about what VCS should be for a large community that requires the accountability that you claim ASF requires.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#24

Post by anemona »

jerf wrote: post #21
jaaron wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry, explain to me clearly why that is the One Answer and we must stop discussing alternatives? You're answering a question I'm not even remotely asking.

http://www.escorta-ta.ro

Re: Apache considered harmful

#25

Post by buff-a »

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.

Indeed.

Git => designed for forking and reintegrating.

Subversion => fucking painful for either.

I find it ironic that your first post complains that the author is comparing ASF to a sand box, but then you go and suggest that GP should just fork a project. I think you really are missing the point: sandboxing is a bunch of people just forking. A community is when those forks are then cherry picked and re-integrated. Subversion is shit at that. Git is awesome.

I have no skin in this game, but if I were to look at the requirements as you describe them, I'd recommend using git and think you were crazy to use subversion.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#26

Post by Legion »

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 because of GitHub and Bitbucket and others, but also because rolling your own isn't as hard either.

Anyone with minimal server admin experience and knowledge of Git can run their own Git server on a VPS with something like Gitolite. I know because I succeeded in doing so myself, and I'm neither a pro server admin, nor did I have any Git experience at the time I did the initial setup of Gitolite. Prior to that, I had set up a Mercurial server with no prior Mercurial experience either. It's pretty easy now.

So, yeah, GitHub is there, but GitHub could disappear tomorrow and the community still wouldn't need to turn to Apache for project hosting. In that respect, they're still solving a problem nobody has anymore, and that was the point the author was making.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#27

Post by plunchete »

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…

So your problem is not with the Apache Software Foundation but with the committers of Apache Solr. On Github you can do a pull request and it never being accepted, so same result as your experience in Solr.

As you say it's trivial to someone to take over the project and maintain it but not trivial to anyone to find the right fork of the project when a project has 100+ forks.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#28

Post by chaseideas »

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…

Strongly agree with jaaron's post.

I also agree with some of the replies stating that the ASF should do as much as they can to foster contribution and a more active/social community. Perhaps they've just been a bit slow to adopt newer solutions because active contributors are content with the existing setup, and it's not seen as a huge benefit to change this just to be hip with the new crowds every quarter. Either way, it's nice to see Git catching on a bit, since it's one of the most common choices nowadays.

As an organization, the ASF does an excellent job of overseeing crucial projects and the bureaucratic side of programming that comes along with developing services in the enterprise space. With such a large community and range of projects, a degree of bureaucracy is required to keep things running smoothly.

They also do a good job of staying a mostly neutral party and working strongly towards the success of any project they "take in" under their wing. As jaaron noted, they don't actively solicit anything, or go around trying to absorb projects. They simply help maintain the projects that have grown up (and many people rely on).

Being strong proponents of the open web, flexible software licenses, and doing a lot of the paperwork heavy-lifting in the internet and programming industry from a legalese standpoint, I think they do a lot more for the web as a whole than most people are aware.

On the community note, I've run a few Apache community forums over the years, and it always seemed Apache users are starving for more community interaction and very appreciative of the social environment. Many of the Apache projects have a bit of a learning curve to be put into practical use, and people appreciate some guidance in learning the ropes. Maybe the ASF will notice and embrace a larger sense of community as time goes on, or perhaps some of us here on HN can connect and brainstorm something to fill the void.

I think the title of this post was just hyperbole to catch peoples attention regarding a web server vulnerability or newly discovered bug. Haha, seemed to work pretty well.

We're often caught up in the hype of new and catchy-sounding web technologies, but Apache is an organization that helped shape the modern web. Could they perhaps make the community more approachable to newbies? Sure. Are they harmful to the open source movement? I would think not. They bring a lot to the table.

- Chase

Re: Apache considered harmful

#29

Post by tptacek »

buff-a wrote: post #23
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'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.

Re: Apache considered harmful

#30

Post by rukkyg »

compay wrote: post #17

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.

I agree. There are also several other typos like missing letters or extra words.
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