Hi Bill... This is Kevin... > William Rowe wrote... > > We value individual contributions here, not > corporate affiliation.
"We" means ASF, right? If so... then I think you just nailed the whole point of this thread, if I am reading the original poster's concerns correctly. There doesn't CURRENTLY seem to be much evidence that what you just said is TRUE. 'Individual' attempts to contribute are getting IGNORED and the last few words of this message thread's subject line are just asking to hear from the powers that be what they intend to do about that ( solutions please ? ). Requiring people to post and re-post and re-post patches until they are blue in the face and/or need to start shouting from mountaintops ( or find a 'backdoor' or 'inside track' into the 'real inner cirlce' like the last guy finally did ) is no way to 'walk the walk' that you just talked ( "We value individual contributions" ). Prove it. Make it EASY to contribute... not a nightmare. I think that's all the guy is asking for. ( and before you come back with the standard "Are YOU willing to review patches, then?" at least I'll be honest and say there's NO WAY right now or for the forseeable future. Unlike you... I am NOT paid to work on Apache and I just don't have the time. Besides, I'm also about 100% sure you don't want me reviewing patches for Apache. Newcomers can go read some archived messages if they are curious about the history there. ) > Nobody has ever gotten a 'pass' into the Apache > HTTP Server for their employment or their employers > efforts. Methinks thou dost protest too much. I never suggested any such thing. I never came near saying that Covalent or any of it's myriad Apache developers were getting 'free passes' to anything. It still takes votes to do things at Apache and even though there are times when the vote count includes mostly Covalent people ( like when Apache 2.0 was released too early ) there is always the VETO as a safety catch. It was never exercised because as far as anyone knows nothing un-toward was going on. Apache is stil a 'meritocracy'... but isn't that part of what the guy who started this thread is complaining about? He tried for 4 months to even get a leg up on the bottom rung of the 'meritocracy' and no one gave a shit. I would say that's a short-circuit to the whole scheme itself. The powers that be stay the powers that be unless 'new' people are being give the chance to show what THEY can do. > The fact that folks, such as Brad and Madhu, > are committers and PMC members is a result of their > personal dedication to the project and that the project > is proud to count them as members, regardless of current > employment status. Then that means there was a time when they first tried to post a patch as well. What was their experience? Good, bad, or ugly? How did they get a 'leg up' in the meritocracy? I'm not asking these questions for myself... It's no mystery to me and I know exactly how it's done and how many rungs there are on that ladder. I am asking the questions on behalf of the original poster and I think the answers might fill out the thread subject. >>If you look at what has REALLY happened in the past >>3 years ( yes... going back that far since it's now 4 or >>5 years since 2.0 became a real blib on the radar ) there's >>no question that there was this intense period of >>development and 'new' things were happening at >>a fast rate. > >Without a doubt this period of development was abnormally >"intense" for any five year old open source project. >Good point. ...and let's hope anyone that's even paying attention to this thread isn't expecting Apache development to always be that way. Sometimes ( like now ) it just becomes 'dog work' and the flash and glitter is hard to find. There have NEVER been enough warm bodies at Apache and there never will be. I think the red flags have gone up because it's starting to appear as if NO ONE is answering the phone at all anymore. That's a problem. >>As more and more developers got interested >>in getting 2.0 cranked out the (limited) resources all >>got eaten up in the 2.0 development cycle and 1.3 >>development virtually shut down. It was even 'officially' >>shut down long before 2.0 was ready ( 1.3 officially went >>into maintenance mode only ). > >That's an interesting point. Most of my early (independent) >contributions, about 600 dev hours worth, were entirely >focused on making 1.3 work under Win32. I know. >From some of your other comments it might appear that your memory is failing a bit, Bill, but you must remember me. I had Apache running under Windows using the (free) Borland compiler about 2 years before you appeared but the concern about making Apache for Windows REAL and going to head to head with Microsoft only cranked up after that Mindspring article appeared and showed that IIS was beating the pants off of pre-fork Apache and the UNIX boys got all pissed off. That was the 2x4 that got the mule's attention. My patches to compile Apache under Windows using the Borland compiler were rejected by Brian Behlendorf himself ( it was so long ago that he was actually still here and participating). There were TONS of source level changes that had to be made and the patches were HUGE so, sure enough, ALL the patches were rejected because ( Deja Vu! ) Brian said it was 'just too much to swallow right now'... and he was right. It really was a 'rewrite' of Apache... not just a bunch of patches, and I can understand why he rejected it all. It was just too much without enough real interest on the part of other developers to justify it ( at the time ). It was great to see SOMEONE finally get the group's cooperation to finish the Windows stuff and I was right there cheering you on... if you recall. You and I even hashed some shit out together. You do nice work, no question. > And you are dead on, > some of my work was accepted, and on other points, I was > asked "hold on, that's a goal in 2.0". There was a little > difference though, there really was very little 2.0 anything > at that time for me to point my efforts at. No one got serious about 2.0 until the whole multi-threading thing reached a boiling point and everyone realized that 'go fork thyself' just wasn't gonna cut the cake much longer. Rather than add it to 1.3 ( which could have been done ) it was all pushed into 2.0. >>So now you had lots of legacy developers ( albeit... lots >>of weekend-warriors, too, but WW's are the heartbeat >>of Open Source ) who knew 1.3 very well but were now >>totally put out to pasture. > >Nay, they were gone long before I started using/working with/hacking >Apache in 2000. I was talking about 'who was even left' at that point... the 'old guard' ( 1.3 gurus ) had already burned out... you are right. >Even mod_ssl and OpenSSL were put to bed. The >old guard had moved on, and few folks paid much attention to the bug >queue. It still feels like it was a hell of a lot better than it is now. 'few' is better than 'is anyone home'? >Those that did were overwhelmed by some requests that just >wouldn't fit well into the architecture of 1.3. Not to mention that 1.3's >core was a twisted mess of platform quirks. It still is, that's why it's >orphaned. Hard on old timers, sure, but for newcomers the difference >between reading 1.3 and 2.0 is night and day. I think that's debatable. 'Twisted mess' is always in the eye of the beholder. Some people LIKE 'ifdefs'... others were trained for OOPS and like the layering and the abstractions. To each their own. Code is code. None of it is ever all that hard to follow once you get used to it. > Yes filters are difficult to grok, but the rest of the entire > server is much more simple to follow. Then why does it seem, these days, that no one is really sure what is happening when during the lifetime of a transaction? There's a lot of 'guessing' going on these days. Very, very few posters seem to be SURE what is actually happening anymore. >Perhaps some will be motivated to make filters, the most >difficult 2.0 feature, a little easier to use or understand. The only thing that's going to help you there are more/better code EXAMPLES. That's the only way people got the original modular design under their belts and more/better filtering examples in src/examples is your only hope there. Talk about 'twisted mess'... I sure wouldn't want to have to document 2.0 filtering and swear I hadn't missed something critical. Concrete (working/tested) examples are the better bet. ( See mod_gzip for Apache 2.0... sitting in your own Apache archives. It was done before the filtering was even finished and it still works fine, FWIW. It is functionally no different from mod_deflate with perhaps more features but at least it's just one more 'example' that WORKS. ). >>Justin already made some progress on this front, and it >>continues to evolve. I think Justin is the 'filtering guru' now, yes? I hope someone is. I know it pretty well but I ain't no guru. I don't have the time for 'guru'ness anymore. >>The 'other' not-so-dedicated-but-certainly-interested >>developers felt 'shut out' of the 2.0 development cycle >>because it was obvious a lot of it was taking place >>'off line' and nothing was being documented so they >>couldn't really get a good handle on what was going >>on in order to make a contribution. > >Hehe, of all of your silly perceptions in this note, I'm picking up on >this one for the benefit of newer list readers. In the bad old days of the >2.0 dev cycle, very little ever happened that wasn't tracked on the >mailing list. Today, there is parallel activity on channels like #apr >(of irc.freenode.net), and your comment reinforces the point that not all >of that activity can be healthy for the wider community. Unless it is >digested and explained to the readership of dev@ and in the maillist >archives for posterity and future explanation. Well... if we are typing things for the benefit of newer list readers I have to go on the record and say that I guess Paul Simon was right... "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." Maybe we are both a little guilty of some buggy 'filtering' ourselves but that's not the way I remember it, Bill. There was a lot going down 'offline' and things were just being 'announced' on the forum. >>At one point one of the Covalent guys ( I believe it >>was that Randy Bloom fellow? ) was pretty much the >>ONLY person who had any idea how the new 'filtering' >>was even SUPPOSED to work. It was quite some time >>before he even finished thinking it through and it went >>through (too?) many re-works to even keep a good >>grasp on it. > >Hehe, this ties into my point in the prior paragraph. >EVERYTHING on the filters was nailed down on the list. I wouldn't say EVERYTHING was and I would certainly not use the word 'nailed down' with regards to those early filtering discussions but certainly everyone remembers the 'filtering war' between Randy and Greg. It was a little TOO public and WAY too much wheel-spinning went on. Roy Fielding was the one who narrowed down the choices by quoting his prior experience on something or the other and said only a BUCKET_BRIGADE was ever going to work... so it just came down to what would please Roy and avoid a VETO, IIRC. Ryan and Greg just had different ideas how to go about doing this BUCKET_BRIGADE fire-drill thing I was the one who posted the first 'W_T_F' message when Ryan first showed us all his idea of what the filtering API's should look like. It just appeared out of nowhere and boy... was it a mess. There was no 'prior discussion'... it was just a code bomb that went off. I wouldn't call that 'everything being nailed down on the list (first)'. There wasn't any discussion at all going on about some thing's until one person's idea of API's just 'appeared'. >What happened? > >Two camps had two different end goals. They did not see eye to eye >on the design. When it got to the point that there was no resolution >to be found, I suggested that a face to face of everyone interested would >be terrific. Note I was an independent, not paid for webserver apps but >actually a database systems dude who liked playing with the web. And >I was tired of waiting for the discussion to end (and sorta confused as were >most observers.) About 20+ folks, five different firms, some independents, >some by phone, sat down to watch Ryan and Greg duke out the design >one bullet point at a time. It was amazing, wish that someone had >a brought a camcorder :-) What you neglected to mention was that this now-famous '303 - Second Street - San Francisco' in-person huddle that you are talking about took place at ( you guessed it ) Covalent Corporate headquarters. Nothing un-toward about that... most of the people who needed to be there already worked at Covalent or were nearer San Francisco than anywhere else and Covalent was gracious enough to loan office space/computer resources for the pow-wow. I just thought it was interesting that you forgot to mention it took place at Covalent Corporate Headquarters. How long after that meeting was it that they hired you? You were then ( still? ) in Nebraska, yes? >And what resulted was a design that satisfied *everyones* requirements. >Details and skeletons were posted to the list in realtime by some observers. When? Got a URI for that. I recall there being a 'shroud of mystery' akin to electing a new pope. There was some purple smoke from the chimney but I don't recall much coming out until well after everyone got home from San Francisco and back to e-mail. >What do you call this? An impromptu mini-hackathon. And it worked >to move forward on a very difficult-to-follow concept. It certainly helped... but it was by no means the end-all and be-all event that solved the filtering 'wars' or even the actual design. It was more about what kind of BUCKETS there would need to be to cover all the bases. ( file, memory, etc. ) than anything else. It still took a lot of bantering to settle on something that would actually use BUCKET_BRIGADES and actually work as an I/O filter in Apache. Whatever really went down there... I do recall that after the '303 Second Street - Covalent' meeting Ryan Bloom ( of Covalent ) was obviously the 'designated hitter' and the filtering was primarily his baby. ...but the filtering APIs were still just gleam even in Ryan's eyes. >>My only real point here ( and the way all this relates to the >>current thread ) is that maybe it's time to acknowledge that >>what is happening now is what will always happen to a major >>development project if you let too many of your eggs go into >>the same 'corporate' basket. > >I'm gonna just close with this observation - Apache was always driven >by two forces, academic and business. By ISPs who needed a stable >platform. By independent coders who earned a living doing systems. >By companies who needed a stable and trusted base platform. You left out a third 'force'... Apache itself. A lot of development has gone down just because the 'Apache' group decided they wanted to do it without being 'driven' by anything external. Call this 'for the sake of it' development such as constantly refining the code and the build process just so it makes more sense to whatever the 'current guard' is. Nothing wrong there... everybody does that and 'favorite build tools' change all the time. >And Guess What? There is nothing new under the sun. The same sorts >of users today are those sorts we had five years ago. Same sorts of >developers, same sorts of contributors. And businesses continue to drive >alot of the key development. It's that way in nearly every platform. Yep... with one glaring exception... On this particular OSS pltform ( Apache ) those 'same users' are still mostly using the 'same version' of the software and haven't upgraded even though the supposedly 'latest and greatest' version has been out for almost 2 YEARS now. That's UNUSUAL and one helluva red flag on 'any platform'. >But ya know who ships the most commercial Apache 2.0 distributions? >OS Vendors. The Red Hats, HPs, and IBMs. One in every box. You forgot one of the BEST ( no kidding ) Apache 2.0 distributions... Covalent Apache 2.0 - commercial version ( with Raven? ). Yea... yea... I know... you said 'OS vendors' and Covalent is not but they do, in fact, have one of the best 'commercial distributions' of Apache 2.0 so funny you didn't mention it. > You might ask, "why weren't they driving the Apache 2.0 effort?" > The answer was (and still is) "They did". Not anywhere NEAR the extent to which people affiliated with one particular 'company' did. ( Covalent ). > Ryan started Apache 2.0 long before he was at Covalent. Of course. Ryan wrote mod_include or something, right? > The funniest bit about your rant was it's irony. 'ironic' would be the right adjective but I'm afraid even with the noun I don't quite see it. I wasn't 'bashing' Ryan. Everyone knows he broke his ass carrying the primary development load on the 2.0 filtering scheme... but then he just vanished before it was even done or documented. I don't see that as ironic. It's unfortunate. It just looked like a bailout ( or a burnout? ). > He came to Covalent from IBM. Apache diehards seek out > Apache-related paychecks, little surprise there. ...no there isn't... ( see previous comments about ALL OSS projects ending up with some place for the most knowledgable developers to park and get paid-to-play )... but it's always a little diconcerting when they all start to end up at the SAME place with a common set of investors behind them. I happen to think it even goes beyond disconcerting... it should always be a 'pink flag' ( not quite a red flag but maybe something to watch closely ) for any OSS project... especially when that company is receiving new multi-million investment dollars and signing high-level high-dollar deals with major PC vendors at the same moment a crucial development cycle is taking place. > I'm proud that I've been a contributor before Covalent Funny wording. Do you mean you aren't proud to be a contributor now that you ARE at Covalent? You should be. Said it before and I'll say it again... you do damn fine work, Bill. There probably wouldn't BE a Windows version of Apache if not for you. There still isn't much httpd-dev interest in it and you have had to carry a heavy banner way too high and way too often. I think you deserve a medal, myself. Nobody codes PERL the way you do. It's actually kinda scary. > and will remain ( proud ) even if I find other > opportunities at some point. > I hacked up Apache/Win32 just because *I* wanted to > run it on a windows box. The project(s) turned out > to be fun, so it was a win-win. It's always nice when your passion turns into your paycheck and always good to see someone make it to that nice place. Makes it easy to go to work in the morning. Later... Kevin PS: You can hear the groans from coast to coast over this message thread but I happen to think it's useful. I'm learning some things I have been wondering about for 2 years and it helps explain WHY Apache development seems to have slowed to a crawl... so I hope the original poster(s) feel they are getting something out of this. You can't do a good job fixing something until you understand why it might be broken. I've made some concrete suggestions on how to crank up the activity at httpd-dev but I'll say some of them again... FWIW... - You have GOT to find a way to get more REAL people using Apache 2.0. The fuel that drives this forum is bug fixes and until some good percentage of your user-base is actually using this Server in production and you discover all the goblins that are still lurking in this code then it's not going to get any better than it is right now. - It's also HOW the developers themselves get familiar with the code ( ALL of it ) to become these sorely needed 'patch reviewers'. - Some of the people who wrote this 2.0 code have vanished already. That's a problem. There have to be OTHERS who know it just as well as the authors. Get the 'paid to play' folks to see if they can know as much as the authors did. - Close 1.3 to all patches ( security included ) and force people to get 2.0 the next time a serious bug shows up. You can do it. You have the power... but do you have the guts? - If not... then open 1.3 back up. Let people who still only understand 1.3 make contributions and consider going to 1.4 If they haven't switched to 2.0 yet it's because they simply don't need it.
