> > 1. Why does this project exist as a separate development effort?
> > Did the folks here simply not have enough bandwidth to deal
> > with the Apache mailing lists? Was there a perception that
> > further development of Apache on Win32 wasn't desired?
>
> Quite frankly yes. This is perhaps because the Apache team and Win32 users
> don't quite see 'eye to eye'. Apache primarily lives on Unix boxen and is
> compiled from scratch, and this is perfectly in line with the Unix
> philosophy and so works fine.
>
> However, Win32 users don't usually have a Win32 background. Many don't have
> a C compiler; many don't have the knowledge C, the stupidly-designed make
> and all the Unix utilities to compile their own Apache. They want a web
> server which is powerful yet comes with a friendly installer that
> autmagically makes everything work. This is partly why IIS, PWS etc have
> been so popular for so long.
I understand that. What I don't understand is why this project is not
working on Apache itself. The only reason that Apache doesn't come with
all these wiz-bang thingies built-in on Win32 is because we haven't
even been able to consistently generate Win32 test builds, and the only
reason for that is because only three Win32 developers have ever bothered
to join the development effort (and two of those have long since moved on
to better platforms).
I'm not saying that a Win32 port isn't desirable -- if we thought that,
we certainly wouldn't have left the code in Apache. The problem is that
the Win32 developers don't seem to want to work in collaboration with the
other Apache developers, and that's what I don't understand.
If this is just a matter of confusion, then I would like to invite
the developers here to work directly on the Apache development tree.
That would much better serve all users than having two separate projects.
If this is just a desire to play in your own sandbox, rather than in a
larger group effort like Apache, then that is fine as well -- provided
that the developers obey the same license restrictions as all other
developers of Apache-based distributions.
Cheers,
Roy T. Fielding, Chairman, The Apache Software Foundation (www.apache.org)
Chief Scientist, eBuilt, Inc. (www.ebuilt.com)
