8 ms·

The rise of the Apache Foundation

78 points by jimjag 10y ago

davidgerard 10y ago
Conspicuously not mentioned: OpenOffice.
- dublinben 10y ago
  Or Apache Wave.
  - davidgerard 10y ago
    The important point for a report on 2015 is that OpenOffice's six-month security hole was a huge embarrassment, and it had been deliberately kept out of project reports to the board. Jim Jagielski, who was interviewed for this article, was one of the people pushing super-hard for Apache to take OpenOffice in 2011, insisting Apache could maintain a desktop application, then having nothing to say when they utterly failed to. And Matt Asay knows all this! And that's why its absence in a report on Apache in 2015 is conspicuous.
    - jimjag 10y ago
      The success, or failure, of OpenOffice itself says little-to-nothing about the success of the ASF itself. Why OpenOffice was not as successful as hoped is a long and drawn out story, and Apache suffered from the ill-will that the OpenOffice community accumulated over the years, due to mismanagement by Oracle. By the time it was donated to the ASF, maybe it was unwise to think that those dynamics could be changed, but it was worth it to try. Even so, the donation of OpenOffice to Apache, and the subsequent relicensing of that codebase to ALv2 was a MAJOR benefit for the entire OpenOffice eco-system, especially LibreOffice which, as soon as the ASF did the relicensing, consumed those changes to their benefit. Which is one benefit of permissive licenses in general. I would encourage people to look at the (open and public) discussions when the incubation of OpenOffice was debated; I would also encourage people to read the tons of other communications about it as it progressed. Instead of having "nothing to say", as this clueless poster suggests, there is/was a LOT to say, which WAS said, and done so in an open, public, and transparent fashion. Maybe all that is uncomfortable for people to admit, since it goes against their misleading and incorrect narrative to paint the ASF and OpenOffice so negatively, and for this reason it is good when real journalists keep the facts straight.
      - davidgerard 10y ago
        During the discussion of the security hole last year, you conspicuously had plenty of time to comment at length on how unfair it was for people to note Apache's utter inability to maintain a secure desktop application, as did several of Apache OpenOffice's alleged developers. However, neither you nor they apparently had any time to fix the security hole. The fix being, literally: remove one file from the download. Well done.
        jimjag 10y ago
        The below link as well as the (public) dev@ list clearly show you to be mistaken: https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/OpenOffice.html https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/OpenOffice.html
        davidgerard 10y ago
        That's a mention from October 2015 and April 2016. The absence from board reports was brought to public attention in July 2015, and the October 2015 mention you cite is a direct response to that: https://lwn.net/Articles/650411/ https://lwn.net/Articles/650411/
        jimjag 10y ago
        Please read the thread: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.apache.openoffice.devel/23907 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.apache.openoffice.devel/2...
        davidgerard 10y ago
        That supplies the background to the LWN piece, and doesn't in any way contradict its assertions that this was a serious problem that should not have been suppressed. That public attention is why it was mentioned at all in the October report.
        10y ago
  - davidw 10y ago
    If you don't have a few failures from time to time, you're not trying hard enough. Forget who said that.
    - danellis 10y ago
      A failure, probably.
      - rectang 10y ago
        "If everything you try works, then you are not trying hard enough." Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Huh, i didn't even know that existed.
- noir_lord 10y ago
  Given the way that LibreOffice has given them an epic beating are you surprised?
  - benbristow 10y ago
    Wasn't really their fault. The project was abandoned way before and they just got dumped with it.
    - bronson 10y ago
      Sure it was. If the Apache foundation didn't want the responsibility then they should have said "no."
      - jimjag 10y ago
        Their were real solid reasons behind accepting the donation... even though most did not pan out, just the relicensing ALONE was a major Good Thing for the OpenOffice ecosystem. This allowed for key and provable IP provenance, something that was lacking in LibreOffice, and known/trackable licensing. Even so, bemoaning the ASF for even trying seems very disingenuous and somewhat ignorant of the facts.
      - mindcrime 10y ago
        The ASF doesn't take "responsibility" for projects in that sense. The individual communities do. The ASF exists mainly to provide legal/infrastructure support and to promote a certain approach - "The Apache Way". For the ASF to accept OpenOffice as a project was absolutely The Right Thing to do, and the world is a better place for it, even if LibreOffice is more popular right now.
geodel 10y ago
IMO large number of apache projects are in 2 categories: 1) First try out in open source. If it gets popular, develop commercial package around open version + extra/proprietary feature or support while open source version is relegated to experiment or lab evaluation in companies. 2) First offer a commercial offering. Once it is proven to be failed or non-strategic or both, donate to Apache foundation. None of that is bad per se but it makes me feel very many apache projects are of middling quality and riding on vendor driven hype.
- rectang 10y ago
  One of the best things about the ASF is that technical governance stops at the Project Management Committee (PMC) level. There is no steering committee sitting in judgment of your project or telling you what to do. The Board's writ extends to community oversight, but not technical oversight. The ASF believes that emphasizing community tends to produce excellent software on average. Gating projects or otherwise interfering based on somebody's arbitrary judgment of quality would be be foreign, and would in fact impede the freedom of projects to develop according to the best judgment of the individuals actually doing the work.
  - geodel 10y ago
    Sure, I think apache is mainly about legal/project management best practices. Let the committers/contributors care about engineering quality.
- teddyh 10y ago
  I had that feeling about the Apache Foundation, but I also saw that they had a lot of projects which seemed to be important, even if most of them seemed to be heavily oriented towards large enterprise-style Java-based things, which I haven't had much use for myself. Then they took on OpenOffice, and lost what little of my respect they still had. Background: OpenOffice used to be the go-to Microsoft Office compatible free software suite for Linux and other Unix-based systems. Then some politics happened and it forked to LibreOffice, and essentially all the developers left for LibreOffice, which is where the development happens today. However, the company still legally owning the OpenOffice code, and the name, still try their darnedest to get people to still use the rapidly-failing OpenOffice, to convince new developers that this is the same OpenOffice that they once knew, etc. (They have had a booth with staff at every FOSDEM for many years now, often conveniently located right beside the LibreOffice booth.) For the Apache Foundation to accept OpenOffice as a project in this situation is unacceptable. Predictably, the aforementioned company tries to play up the Apache Foundation connection at every opportunity, trying to imply that since it's an Apache Foundation project, it is therefore a serious and still active software project.
cm3 10y ago
As an open source contributor and developer myself I never feel good about releasing stuff under GPL or Apache (yes, both) because they're long and some parts like the liability section kinda contradict what a liability disclaimer is about, and most importantly, it's impossible for a developer to understand it. That's why most projects initiated by developers (without a company) are MIT or ISC or a BSD variant. Also see the OpenBSD project's (which I don't use and am not affiliated with) views on the Apache 2 license. All I can understand is that both GPL and Apache licenses are that long and hard to understand for non-lawyers because they wanted to have a water-proof legal document. Which means as a developer you have to trust what others think the text means if you were to release code under it. I use the ISC license because I understand it and can explain if someone asks me about the conditions. I couldn't do the same with eith GPL or Apache. ISC/MIT with a patent clause might be useful addition for those of use who need that.
- toyg 10y ago
  > That's why most projects initiated by developers (without a company) are MIT or ISC or a BSD variant [Citation Needed] A lot of Linux software of all sorts is GPL. A lot.
  - cm3 10y ago
    I said "initiated by developers", particularly with the post-Github ecosystem in mind. In Linux, obviously, there are many GPL projects, that's not a surprise. I'm talking about what license most developers choose who aren't working on the linux userland (or kernel). There are whole communities where liberal is the default license choice (Haskell, Erlang, Apache, BSDs, Golang).
    - toyg 10y ago
      Sure, there are a lot of communities out there, but before you can say "most developers", you'd have to give me some numbers. My "anecdata" is exactly the opposite. Until a few years ago, most software I'd use or release was GPL, or bastardized versions like MPL. BSD was seen as legacy and MIT was fairly rare; APL was just used by the ASF. Things have changed a bit, mostly because GPL is a bit messy when applied to stuff like JS libraries (Wordpress themes were probably a turning point for many). But the GPL is still massive.
cdetrio 10y ago
One of the ASF founders, Brian Behlendorf, was recently appointed E.D. at hyperledger.org (a project of the Linux Foundation). Perhaps Hyperledger is aiming to become the Apache of blockchains.

78 points by jimjag 10y ago

davidgerard 10y ago

Conspicuously not mentioned: OpenOffice.

dublinben 10y ago
Or Apache Wave.
- davidgerard 10y ago
  The important point for a report on 2015 is that OpenOffice's six-month security hole was a huge embarrassment, and it had been deliberately kept out of project reports to the board. Jim Jagielski, who was interviewed for this article, was one of the people pushing super-hard for Apache to take OpenOffice in 2011, insisting Apache could maintain a desktop application, then having nothing to say when they utterly failed to. And Matt Asay knows all this! And that's why its absence in a report on Apache in 2015 is conspicuous.
  - jimjag 10y ago
    The success, or failure, of OpenOffice itself says little-to-nothing about the success of the ASF itself. Why OpenOffice was not as successful as hoped is a long and drawn out story, and Apache suffered from the ill-will that the OpenOffice community accumulated over the years, due to mismanagement by Oracle. By the time it was donated to the ASF, maybe it was unwise to think that those dynamics could be changed, but it was worth it to try. Even so, the donation of OpenOffice to Apache, and the subsequent relicensing of that codebase to ALv2 was a MAJOR benefit for the entire OpenOffice eco-system, especially LibreOffice which, as soon as the ASF did the relicensing, consumed those changes to their benefit. Which is one benefit of permissive licenses in general. I would encourage people to look at the (open and public) discussions when the incubation of OpenOffice was debated; I would also encourage people to read the tons of other communications about it as it progressed. Instead of having "nothing to say", as this clueless poster suggests, there is/was a LOT to say, which WAS said, and done so in an open, public, and transparent fashion. Maybe all that is uncomfortable for people to admit, since it goes against their misleading and incorrect narrative to paint the ASF and OpenOffice so negatively, and for this reason it is good when real journalists keep the facts straight.
    - davidgerard 10y ago
      During the discussion of the security hole last year, you conspicuously had plenty of time to comment at length on how unfair it was for people to note Apache's utter inability to maintain a secure desktop application, as did several of Apache OpenOffice's alleged developers. However, neither you nor they apparently had any time to fix the security hole. The fix being, literally: remove one file from the download. Well done.
      - jimjag 10y ago
        The below link as well as the (public) dev@ list clearly show you to be mistaken: https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/OpenOffice.html https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/OpenOffice.html
        davidgerard 10y ago
        That's a mention from October 2015 and April 2016. The absence from board reports was brought to public attention in July 2015, and the October 2015 mention you cite is a direct response to that: https://lwn.net/Articles/650411/ https://lwn.net/Articles/650411/
        jimjag 10y ago
        Please read the thread: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.apache.openoffice.devel/23907 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.apache.openoffice.devel/2...
        davidgerard 10y ago
        That supplies the background to the LWN piece, and doesn't in any way contradict its assertions that this was a serious problem that should not have been suppressed. That public attention is why it was mentioned at all in the October report.
        10y ago
- davidw 10y ago
  If you don't have a few failures from time to time, you're not trying hard enough. Forget who said that.
  - danellis 10y ago
    A failure, probably.
    - rectang 10y ago
      "If everything you try works, then you are not trying hard enough." Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Huh, i didn't even know that existed.
noir_lord 10y ago
Given the way that LibreOffice has given them an epic beating are you surprised?
- benbristow 10y ago
  Wasn't really their fault. The project was abandoned way before and they just got dumped with it.
  - bronson 10y ago
    Sure it was. If the Apache foundation didn't want the responsibility then they should have said "no."
    - jimjag 10y ago
      Their were real solid reasons behind accepting the donation... even though most did not pan out, just the relicensing ALONE was a major Good Thing for the OpenOffice ecosystem. This allowed for key and provable IP provenance, something that was lacking in LibreOffice, and known/trackable licensing. Even so, bemoaning the ASF for even trying seems very disingenuous and somewhat ignorant of the facts.
    - mindcrime 10y ago
      The ASF doesn't take "responsibility" for projects in that sense. The individual communities do. The ASF exists mainly to provide legal/infrastructure support and to promote a certain approach - "The Apache Way". For the ASF to accept OpenOffice as a project was absolutely The Right Thing to do, and the world is a better place for it, even if LibreOffice is more popular right now.

geodel 10y ago

IMO large number of apache projects are in 2 categories: 1) First try out in open source. If it gets popular, develop commercial package around open version + extra/proprietary feature or support while open source version is relegated to experiment or lab evaluation in companies. 2) First offer a commercial offering. Once it is proven to be failed or non-strategic or both, donate to Apache foundation. None of that is bad per se but it makes me feel very many apache projects are of middling quality and riding on vendor driven hype.

rectang 10y ago
One of the best things about the ASF is that technical governance stops at the Project Management Committee (PMC) level. There is no steering committee sitting in judgment of your project or telling you what to do. The Board's writ extends to community oversight, but not technical oversight. The ASF believes that emphasizing community tends to produce excellent software on average. Gating projects or otherwise interfering based on somebody's arbitrary judgment of quality would be be foreign, and would in fact impede the freedom of projects to develop according to the best judgment of the individuals actually doing the work.
- geodel 10y ago
  Sure, I think apache is mainly about legal/project management best practices. Let the committers/contributors care about engineering quality.
teddyh 10y ago
I had that feeling about the Apache Foundation, but I also saw that they had a lot of projects which seemed to be important, even if most of them seemed to be heavily oriented towards large enterprise-style Java-based things, which I haven't had much use for myself. Then they took on OpenOffice, and lost what little of my respect they still had. Background: OpenOffice used to be the go-to Microsoft Office compatible free software suite for Linux and other Unix-based systems. Then some politics happened and it forked to LibreOffice, and essentially all the developers left for LibreOffice, which is where the development happens today. However, the company still legally owning the OpenOffice code, and the name, still try their darnedest to get people to still use the rapidly-failing OpenOffice, to convince new developers that this is the same OpenOffice that they once knew, etc. (They have had a booth with staff at every FOSDEM for many years now, often conveniently located right beside the LibreOffice booth.) For the Apache Foundation to accept OpenOffice as a project in this situation is unacceptable. Predictably, the aforementioned company tries to play up the Apache Foundation connection at every opportunity, trying to imply that since it's an Apache Foundation project, it is therefore a serious and still active software project.

cm3 10y ago

As an open source contributor and developer myself I never feel good about releasing stuff under GPL or Apache (yes, both) because they're long and some parts like the liability section kinda contradict what a liability disclaimer is about, and most importantly, it's impossible for a developer to understand it. That's why most projects initiated by developers (without a company) are MIT or ISC or a BSD variant. Also see the OpenBSD project's (which I don't use and am not affiliated with) views on the Apache 2 license. All I can understand is that both GPL and Apache licenses are that long and hard to understand for non-lawyers because they wanted to have a water-proof legal document. Which means as a developer you have to trust what others think the text means if you were to release code under it. I use the ISC license because I understand it and can explain if someone asks me about the conditions. I couldn't do the same with eith GPL or Apache. ISC/MIT with a patent clause might be useful addition for those of use who need that.

toyg 10y ago
> That's why most projects initiated by developers (without a company) are MIT or ISC or a BSD variant [Citation Needed] A lot of Linux software of all sorts is GPL. A lot.
- cm3 10y ago
  I said "initiated by developers", particularly with the post-Github ecosystem in mind. In Linux, obviously, there are many GPL projects, that's not a surprise. I'm talking about what license most developers choose who aren't working on the linux userland (or kernel). There are whole communities where liberal is the default license choice (Haskell, Erlang, Apache, BSDs, Golang).
  - toyg 10y ago
    Sure, there are a lot of communities out there, but before you can say "most developers", you'd have to give me some numbers. My "anecdata" is exactly the opposite. Until a few years ago, most software I'd use or release was GPL, or bastardized versions like MPL. BSD was seen as legacy and MIT was fairly rare; APL was just used by the ASF. Things have changed a bit, mostly because GPL is a bit messy when applied to stuff like JS libraries (Wordpress themes were probably a turning point for many). But the GPL is still massive.

cdetrio 10y ago

One of the ASF founders, Brian Behlendorf, was recently appointed E.D. at hyperledger.org (a project of the Linux Foundation). Perhaps Hyperledger is aiming to become the Apache of blockchains.