On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, Lars Eilebrecht wrote:
> According to Steven Noels: > > > - http://www.netcrucible.com/blog/ ("The whole Apache project is > > impressive in the spirit of the pre-bubble open-source projects, but > > Apache's heavy dependence on BigCo funding (IBM, Sun, etc.) kind of > > disqualifies them and spoils the romance.") > > Well, that's bullshit ... The ASF does not depend on 'BigCo' funding and > never has been. Of course some of those companies have donated money, > bandwith or hardware which is nothing unsual. And let's not forget another source of softer money; the 550 odd companies which pay the salaries of our committers; most of whom work on apache code in the boss their time. (In fact; looking at some of the statistics gathered by social/antropology researchers (you know - these folks who pester coding lists with Surveys) - it is interesting to see a split between the Apache/BSD and GPL community; the latter does more in their own time; and tends to be more isolationalist; whereas this crowd tends to mix their real work and apache work much more seamlessly.. that is if you believe statistics with N<50 :-) Though some companies may have (had at times) a fair chunk of committers working for them; those numbers are hardly ever above 10 or so for any given company, perhaps hitting 2% of the total committer base which is in the 650's or so. And over the past 5 years we've seen quite a few concentrations of committers appear and then disband later (e.g. Organic/wired, Critical Path, even SUN had a large chunk at one point; they dispersed, same for IBM, then Covalent has disgorged itself of committers in the last 12 months, etc, etc). In fact it is kind of interesting to see individuals floating through industry; working for IBM, Sun, BEA, a small private company, someone big again; but yet continue to play the same role in the Apache community. Combine this with another trend, at the O'Reilly open source conference, a fair number of people has brought their kids and families, several times in a row now, and you suddenly see social/familly cultures around this volunteer work, across virtual links - which somehow seem more real and persistant than the employer of the week. It is almost as if you're back to the period before the industrial revolution; where famillies, rather than a person, where tied to economic activities. And where the concept of 'holiday' or 'your own free time' was also essentially not existent as a clear separate thing. A struggle OS people have today. Dw
