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I once heard that Apache is the graveyard for open source software. Is that really the case?

by maxloh 4y ago

mickeyp 4y ago
It is and it isn't. There's some good stuff there, but there's ever the risk that you'll get bushwhacked by something that you need to pay an expensive consultancy -- who just so happens to be the team behind the product -- to fix. Though I feel bad for the person who decides to peruse Apache's list of projects and decide what technology to use based solely on the high-level overviews. Good luck picking the wheat from the chaff!
- michaelmior 4y ago
  I'll just note that the risk mentioned certainly does not apply to Apache Calcite. (Disclaimer: I am a member of the Apache Calcite PMC, but not terribly active at the moment.)
jamesblonde 4y ago
A lot of open-source Apache projects were backed by commercial companies, and clouds (primarly AWS) forked those projects competing directly with the companies backing the Apache projects. The end result was that the commercial companies mostly released new versions of the software with more restrictive licenses that could not be sold for free by the cloud companies. That doesn't make Apache software a graveyard. It just makes that go-to-market open-source model leveraging Apache's brand a dead-end.
di4na 4y ago
Yes and no. A lot of projects in Apache control started as one (big) company project, got open sourced then move to Apache, in order to allow collaboration with a "community" without as much conflict of interest. But then the original sponsor also usually lose interest and/or no community get creates. Hence, graveyard. Or it got opensource as last ditch try to keep it running after the sponsor stopped wanting it. And then it is usually a graveyard move. It is not that Apache kills them. It is that they were already dead and Apache is the place that take them in to accompany their demise.
gdubya 4y ago
No
kitd 4y ago
It depends. There are a large number of dead projects. There are also a large number of libraries and tools that are active and widely depended on, but you may not have heard of them. Then there are quite a few large projects donated by corps with active communities. See this page https://projects.apache.org/statistics.html https://projects.apache.org/statistics.html and scroll down to "Largest/Busiest repositories". There's a list of widely used enterprise software in there which are definitely not dead.
Podollin 4y ago
to me it feels the same, plenty of great projects that essentially died once they got into apache. It has that java feeling.
michaelmior 4y ago
It's certainly not the case for Apache Calcite. Calcite is pretty widely used by a number of companies and there are a number of highly active developers.
BenoitP 4y ago
Calcite is relatively unknown, but it is the base so many other projects are built on. Among them is Apache Flink, which is quite alive and top of its category (low latency distributed stream processing) https://calcite.apache.org/docs/powered_by.html https://calcite.apache.org/docs/powered_by.html

I once heard that Apache is the graveyard for open source software. Is that really the case?

by maxloh 4y ago

I once heard that Apache is the graveyard for open source software. Is that really the case?

It is and it isn't. There's some good stuff there, but there's ever the risk that you'll get bushwhacked by something that you need to pay an expensive consultancy -- who just so happens to be the team behind the product -- to fix. Though I feel bad for the person who decides to peruse Apache's list of projects and decide what technology to use based solely on the high-level overviews. Good luck picking the wheat from the chaff!

michaelmior 4y ago
I'll just note that the risk mentioned certainly does not apply to Apache Calcite. (Disclaimer: I am a member of the Apache Calcite PMC, but not terribly active at the moment.)

jamesblonde 4y ago

A lot of open-source Apache projects were backed by commercial companies, and clouds (primarly AWS) forked those projects competing directly with the companies backing the Apache projects. The end result was that the commercial companies mostly released new versions of the software with more restrictive licenses that could not be sold for free by the cloud companies. That doesn't make Apache software a graveyard. It just makes that go-to-market open-source model leveraging Apache's brand a dead-end.

di4na 4y ago

Yes and no. A lot of projects in Apache control started as one (big) company project, got open sourced then move to Apache, in order to allow collaboration with a "community" without as much conflict of interest. But then the original sponsor also usually lose interest and/or no community get creates. Hence, graveyard. Or it got opensource as last ditch try to keep it running after the sponsor stopped wanting it. And then it is usually a graveyard move. It is not that Apache kills them. It is that they were already dead and Apache is the place that take them in to accompany their demise.

gdubya 4y ago

kitd 4y ago

It depends. There are a large number of dead projects. There are also a large number of libraries and tools that are active and widely depended on, but you may not have heard of them. Then there are quite a few large projects donated by corps with active communities. See this page https://projects.apache.org/statistics.html https://projects.apache.org/statistics.html and scroll down to "Largest/Busiest repositories". There's a list of widely used enterprise software in there which are definitely not dead.

Podollin 4y ago

to me it feels the same, plenty of great projects that essentially died once they got into apache. It has that java feeling.

michaelmior 4y ago

It's certainly not the case for Apache Calcite. Calcite is pretty widely used by a number of companies and there are a number of highly active developers.

BenoitP 4y ago

Calcite is relatively unknown, but it is the base so many other projects are built on. Among them is Apache Flink, which is quite alive and top of its category (low latency distributed stream processing) https://calcite.apache.org/docs/powered_by.html https://calcite.apache.org/docs/powered_by.html