Guys, How about everyone take a deep breath here. Right now it's about helping not hurting. It's about trying to deliver a product which clearly needs some vision to a customer base that is increasingly becoming IIS dependant (check the Netcraft numbers).
You're all missing the bigger picture. Apache is on the decline. You should be doing anything and everything to come up with a consistent, compelling, credible product that gives your customer base confidence that Apache is still relevant. I've been watching these threads and feel for the Apache Lounge guy. I remember the wars Kevin and I went through when we tried to donate Mod_Gzip to the Apache foundation. Mod_gzip succeeded beyond all imagination, but as the saying goes "there has to be a better way" than dealing with all this nonsense. What's important here is your customer base. It's in decline because there are too many inconsistent versions of Apache out there without any clear differentiator over the competition (Microsoft) which is starting to eat everyone's lunch. Steffen was trying to help. How about helping him to succeed. Let's put the personalities to one side and attach the problem not the people. Cheers, Peter _________________________________________________________ Peter J. Cranstone 5o9, Inc. Boulder, CO USA Mobile: 303.809.7342 | GMT -7 Skype: Cranstone Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Blog: http://petercranstone.blogspot.com Making Web Services Contextually Aware Web site: www.5o9inc.com -----Original Message----- From: William A. Rowe, Jr. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, August 19, 2007 1:41 PM To: dev@httpd.apache.org Subject: Re: Apachelounge has to remove Apachelounge Feather, be warned Steffen wrote: > > On request I have to remove the Feather, see the mail below. You are welcome to share that private post, of course. I mailed you privately so that you could ask any questions of the prc@ folks, and even ask them for permission, at a more leisurely pace. I was also trying to handle that issue more tactfully than I had the first issue. I said (nicely) If you would please remove the Apache feather, and indicate the site is not affiliated with the Apache Software Foundation nor the Apache httpd Server Project, I believe this would address all of the Foundation's concerns. which was to say, the only issue we have with you as part of our community is not confusing users between the ASF site and your site. By making sure your users aren't confused you earn the goodwill of the developers and community. Your site is part of the wider httpd user community, and that's a good thing. Your site isn't part of the Foundation. Our logo integrated into yours could be misleading. We have an imperative to defend our mark, that's how trademarks work. Again, I politely offered for you to ask [EMAIL PROTECTED] They are the final word, if they say to you not to use it, don't. Or if they offered "no, we don't find that confusing, you have permission to use it in that way", then you would be able to add 'Feather logo used with permission of the ASF' or something similar on your own site. Now, more about confusion. In your favor, you very clearly indicate that it's your build and how you've gone about building it. I've supported all of you, including Hunter, yourself and countless others when you bring back problem reports. We don't always agree on the "one right fix", but it's always fixed. And you are one of the first to bring us trouble reports about a release candidate. Please don't decide we don't appreciate you if we simply point out problems with your site. We don't discriminate, we bring these up to all the sites where we find such problems, as we find them. I'm sorry if you feel singled out today, or if my tone rubbed you the wrong way. Jeff and I offered comments in January about how you presented the release candidate as releases. You ended the conversation that you would take them down but you didn't see our reasoning. http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/httpd-dev/200701.mbox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] Now, I'd offered you some of the reasoning (not all, for sure) of why it's not a good idea *in your interests*, and also why it's not helpful to your users if they are confused by an unreleased package. Maybe you still don't see the reasoning. But I hoped you would understand these are not any territorial dispute, but for your benefit. If I disliked you I would have said nothing. The bottom line is that nobody took issue with Jeff's or my comments. They are free to do so. Colm has this time around. His points don't quite jive, if you offered a patch set and said "hey, this is the difference between the ASF's 2.2.4 and my binaries here", then his point would be spot-on and we'd all agree there is no issue. Or change it radically and don't name it Apache 2.2.4. That's fine too. I couldn't find the argument for releasing our *candidates* on external sites from Colm's observations. > So other Apache Community sites are warned. And maybe customer sites with > the Apache logo must be warned. We do. There is fair-use (when you see a feather on slashdot next to an article about the foundation) and then there's the case where folks blend the feather into their own logo, as you had, or if they use it to represent that they are an Apache company. If you look at the other players in your space, they aren't labeling their pages with the Apache feather. Where they are, we politely send them a similar letter. > Till now I was thinking that we where a friends Community in sake of Open > Source. Well, there are two communities, first there is the ASF. And there is also the wider community. You participate in both, which is great. > Correct me if I wrong, but sometimes I have the feeling that ASF and/or > Covalent Technologies are not happy with the Apache Lounge. And like Tom > said before: sounds a bit more territorial than legal to me. Maybe > Covalent Technologies is also trying to protect there position as > distributor ? No. There are plenty of distributors of Apache binaries for Windows. My company actually left the sphere of providing 'offsite' binaries for the community, instead - focusing on providing resources at the ASF. And have I said anything disparaging about your providing VC2005 based builds of Apache httpd *released* software? No. I have no issue, and no territory to defend on this. ALL I said was release candidates are here, remain here, discussed here and then made available to the entire community, ApacheLounge included. These other distributors don't ship release candidates, and if they do, they assume the risks because they have deeper pockets than you or I do. > So I will keeping www.apachelounge.com down , I do not not want to much > hassle to sort out the issues addressed here. There are two. One, release candidates, you can keep discussing. Now that Colm and others have spoke up, we can hash that out in another thread. The second, use of the Apache mark, is trivial to resolve. Please don't be so incredible to claim it's a hardship or "being mean to you". Either ask prc@ for permission or remove it from your logo. Asking for permission isn't really that hard. [EMAIL PROTECTED] is happy to discuss it with you. Either way, I ask you one final time, to please stop slandering my employer in the matter of these posts to you. You are making this personal and reading in much more than is there, and have squashed much of my goodwill to you. Fix your splash page. You can attribute these comments "William A. Rowe, Jr. (httpd project member)". Bill
