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Apparently, one of the big motivating reasons for this was "cost". > The foundation’s 2018 five-year strategic plan noted that infrastructure services account

by saurik 8y ago

Apparently, one of the big motivating reasons for this was "cost". > The foundation’s 2018 five-year strategic plan noted that infrastructure services account for more than 80 percent of the total ASF expense budget, adding: “Increasingly, project communities have infrastructure requirements that strain the capabilities of the ASF.” > The report noted that, given burgeoning costs, encouraging the use of more externally provided services was its best option. (“Using a simple growth forecast to project expenses and effective governance and mentoring to ensure that using externally provided services does not in any way present barriers to entry to projects or reduce transparency, inclusiveness and diversity.”) https://www.cbronline.com/news/apache-software-foundation-github https://www.cbronline.com/news/apache-software-foundation-gi... Given that I find ASF has always been very moral with their fundraising and careful with their money (unlike a couple other major non-profits I happily would name in any other context), as disappointed as I am with this decision, it is difficult for me to blame them for making it: git is extremely difficult to scale correctly (due to its reliance on interactive protocols), which led Google Code and then GitHub to rewrite large portions of it (of course, as closed source internal-only this-is-our-competitive-advantage projects); when you are a small non-profit, knowing that you would have 5x the resources for staffing if you just swapped out some mere tooling has got to be a really really tough choice for something that isn't quite your core moral (as it would be with say, the FSF).

pedrocx486 8y ago
>as disappointed as I am with this decision May I ask why? Them moving doesn't look like an issue to me at least.
- Phrodo_00 8y ago
  Personally, my only gripe (even though it's not a huge deal) is I'd have preferred it if they used hosting that actaully was open source (like gitlab)
  - GordonS 8y ago
    That would decrease costs, but would it meaningfully increase community participation?
exolymph 8y ago
> unlike a couple other major non-profits I happily would name in any other context Can this reply be the context? Which ones?
- lucb1e 8y ago
  My first thought is Wikipedia, but I'm sure there is a large amount of other examples.
GordonS 8y ago
Holy shit, they're spending $800k a year on infrastructure! Honestly, it's difficult to understand why they haven't sooner moved to GitHub, or even GitLab or the like - it feels reckless. That money could be put to far greater use - as an Apache supporter who hasn't ever felt the need to look at their costs, I have to say that I'm very disappointed.
- rectang 8y ago
  I encourage you (and everyone else) to look more closely at the ASF budget. As noted above, it's 80% for infrastructure, and that is supporting hundreds of projects. Some of those are simple, some are not at all (Hadoop, Cordova, Spark, OpenOffice, Mesos, CloudStack, etc.). In fact, many of those projects rely on other resources not included in that 800k: How much does it cost to run a testing farm for all the devices Cordova has to run on? Do you really think 800k is such a crazy number? The ASF runs lean. It has to, because it is a 501(c)(3) charity and cannot be as responsive to large donors as some might prefer (i.e. giving them more direct control over the foundation in return for more funding.)
  - MoOmer 8y ago
    Also, those costs cover much, much, more than git.
  - GordonS 8y ago
    Maybe I hadn't given it too much thought before commenting. Do you know where I can find more details of what the 800k goes on?
    - rectang 8y ago
      Besides the five-year plan, the most easily accessible public records would be the Annual Report and the monthly reports from the Infrastructure V.P. and the Treasurer. https://www.apache.org/board/plan.html https://www.apache.org/board/plan.html https://s.apache.org/FY2018AnnualReport https://s.apache.org/FY2018AnnualReport https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/Treasurer.html https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/Treasurer.html https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/Infrastructure.html https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/Infrastructure.html I don't know that there's a more granular breakdown of Infra's budget available online. For what it's worth, the biggest single expense, for many years, has been sysadmin labor. Bandwidth also looms large, though last I knew much of what the ASF used was provided by OSU OSL and SourceForge.
srndh 8y ago
Sounds like a stupid question, but I am seriously asking it. What was the infrastructure of ASF? Own servers? Wouldn't moving to a cloud provide helped reduce cost? Ethically speaking, isn't it a conflict of interest that an idol of the open-source world is pairing up with Microsoft. Now that Microsoft has lost the former glory, they are desperately trying present a clean image, but all their deeds of the past are still fresh. I am waiting for the MSJVM 2.0 with github & atom & VSCode. How is the Linux or FSF or Mozilla repo hosted? Scaling issues with GIT cannot be only tackled by Microsoft & Google.

by saurik 8y ago

pedrocx486 8y ago

>as disappointed as I am with this decision May I ask why? Them moving doesn't look like an issue to me at least.

Phrodo_00 8y ago
Personally, my only gripe (even though it's not a huge deal) is I'd have preferred it if they used hosting that actaully was open source (like gitlab)
- GordonS 8y ago
  That would decrease costs, but would it meaningfully increase community participation?

exolymph 8y ago

> unlike a couple other major non-profits I happily would name in any other context Can this reply be the context? Which ones?

lucb1e 8y ago
My first thought is Wikipedia, but I'm sure there is a large amount of other examples.

GordonS 8y ago

Holy shit, they're spending $800k a year on infrastructure! Honestly, it's difficult to understand why they haven't sooner moved to GitHub, or even GitLab or the like - it feels reckless. That money could be put to far greater use - as an Apache supporter who hasn't ever felt the need to look at their costs, I have to say that I'm very disappointed.

rectang 8y ago
I encourage you (and everyone else) to look more closely at the ASF budget. As noted above, it's 80% for infrastructure, and that is supporting hundreds of projects. Some of those are simple, some are not at all (Hadoop, Cordova, Spark, OpenOffice, Mesos, CloudStack, etc.). In fact, many of those projects rely on other resources not included in that 800k: How much does it cost to run a testing farm for all the devices Cordova has to run on? Do you really think 800k is such a crazy number? The ASF runs lean. It has to, because it is a 501(c)(3) charity and cannot be as responsive to large donors as some might prefer (i.e. giving them more direct control over the foundation in return for more funding.)
- MoOmer 8y ago
  Also, those costs cover much, much, more than git.
- GordonS 8y ago
  Maybe I hadn't given it too much thought before commenting. Do you know where I can find more details of what the 800k goes on?
  - rectang 8y ago
    Besides the five-year plan, the most easily accessible public records would be the Annual Report and the monthly reports from the Infrastructure V.P. and the Treasurer. https://www.apache.org/board/plan.html https://www.apache.org/board/plan.html https://s.apache.org/FY2018AnnualReport https://s.apache.org/FY2018AnnualReport https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/Treasurer.html https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/Treasurer.html https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/Infrastructure.html https://whimsy.apache.org/board/minutes/Infrastructure.html I don't know that there's a more granular breakdown of Infra's budget available online. For what it's worth, the biggest single expense, for many years, has been sysadmin labor. Bandwidth also looms large, though last I knew much of what the ASF used was provided by OSU OSL and SourceForge.

srndh 8y ago

Sounds like a stupid question, but I am seriously asking it. What was the infrastructure of ASF? Own servers? Wouldn't moving to a cloud provide helped reduce cost? Ethically speaking, isn't it a conflict of interest that an idol of the open-source world is pairing up with Microsoft. Now that Microsoft has lost the former glory, they are desperately trying present a clean image, but all their deeds of the past are still fresh. I am waiting for the MSJVM 2.0 with github & atom & VSCode. How is the Linux or FSF or Mozilla repo hosted? Scaling issues with GIT cannot be only tackled by Microsoft & Google.