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I've felt for a long time (maybe even a decade) that Apache is the place OSS goes to retire/die. It is heartbreaking in some ways, they became the stewards for

I've felt for a long time (maybe even a decade) that Apache is the place OSS goes to retire/die. It is heartbreaking in some ways, they became the stewards for a lot of interesting projects [1]. And the venerable web server was so important to the early web. I am still running Apache vhosts on a few personal websites. It is also a totally unfair characterization. I mean, they still house relevant projects including Kafka, Lucene, Zookeeper, Spark, Arrow and many others. But it does feel Apache lives in a kind of stasis, a relic of the "old" web, like geocities sites or MySpace. If a project ends up in Apache it feels to me like it has gone out to pasture. 1. https://projects.apache.org/projects.html https://projects.apache.org/projects.html

brand 3y ago
It seems that “younger generation” programmers underestimate the value of governance in OSS. The recent Terraform kerluffle couldn’t have happened if Terraform was in the ASF, etc.
- zoogeny 3y ago
  There is a quote: "When you stop growing you start dying" (William S. Burroughs). I am not sure I believe that the kind of governance that Apache is providing is helping to grow the projects under its supervision. Your comparison to Terraform is also interesting. Apache Kafka, for example, has been absorbed by Amazon (MSK). Apache Spark is Amazon EMR. Just looking through Amazon's paid service offering I find several Apache projects rebranded and for sale. A cynical take could be that Apache is an org that helps companies like Amazon profit off of the work of open source developers.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    But with software, sometimes there comes a time when it really should stop growing. When any further "enhancements" make the software worse. It's something I've seen countless times in my life. A piece of software achieves something pretty close to perfection for its task, but the self-imposed "need" to continue development on it ruins it.
    - rzzzt 3y ago
      Does it read mail and/or contain a subset of Common Lisp?
      - worthless-trash 3y ago
        All software will eventually grow to send email. And lets be honest, if its not written in lisp, are you really trying ?
    - systems_glitch 3y ago
      Absolutely. Some things go into bugfix-only mode because their code has reached perfection for the 99% use case.
      - broeng 3y ago
        And then we fear it's a dead project, and move on in search for something else with active contributors.
        JohnFen 3y ago
        Certainly not everyone. Personally, I pay little attention to that sort of thing at all. I don't care if it's a "dead" project or not -- as long as the software is meeting my needs, that's the only thing that matters. If/when it stops doing that, then I'll look for alternatives.
        systems_glitch 3y ago
        Same here. I run Slackware on all of my engineering and development workstations. It does what I want, nothing gets hosed when running updates, and I don't feel like my main job is sysadmin. But I keep getting told I need a "Slackware intervention" :P
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      Hot take: Python 3. Totally unnecessary.
  - augustk 3y ago
    Why do you think software needs to grow?
    - kuchenbecker 3y ago
      It needs at least a stable set of users, but maintaining a set of users is essentially managing the set of people onboarding and the set of people migrating off. If you're shrinking then a competitor is providing better options, or your problem space has shifted.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - dale_glass 3y ago
      Software as big as Open Office may not need to technically grow, but still needs a lot of work to stay current. Various dependencies, like XML parsers, JPEG decoders, HTTP libraries, etc, change over time, drop deprecated APIs and need the main application to adapt. It'll also bump into the tech changing around it -- UTF8, year 2038, 64 bit CPUs, etc. For a project this size it takes work just to stand still and keep it comfortably buildable on a modern Linux distro.
  - znpy 3y ago
    > "When you stop growing you start dying" death is part of life though, and the only thing that grows without and end is cancer (quite literally). I don't see why project can't just be considered "done": yeah you update dependencies and make it work with new/current formats, but essentially it's done. The use case is now clearly defined, implemented and tested.
  - rbowen 3y ago
    I'm fascinated at your characterization of both Kafka and Spark as being absorbed by Amazon. AWS offers hosted versions of each. They are not, as you say "rebranded and for sale", but rather are hosted services, running whatever upstream releases. But to say that the project as been absorbed by AWS (in either case) is simply false. Spark is developed by a community of numerous companies, of which Databricks is usually most prominent. Kafka is likewise a community of several organizations, of which Confluent tends to be the most influential. Yes, Apache is (and always has been) business-friendly. The license enables companies to profit on those projects. But, for the most part, companies that benefit from those project also contribute back to them, as a way to ensure sustainability. That's how it is supposed to work.
  - toast0 3y ago
    > A cynical take could be that Apache is an org that helps companies like Amazon profit off of the work of open source developers. Apache httpd certainly helped tons of companies profit, so helping companies profit doesn't seem off-brand.
- debacle 3y ago
  Terraform wouldn't be in the ASF unless it was dead, is the point.
  - KptMarchewa 3y ago
    There is giant amount of actively worked upon, very heavily used software projects in Apache: Airflow, Spark, Flink, Kafka, Lucene and a lot of foundations on which those are written or use: Parquet, Arrow, Iceberg.
    - CuriousCosmic 3y ago
      But are they web scale? (/s if that isn't clear)
    - addicted 3y ago
      Maybe the real problem is that the ASF has been adopting too many abandoned projects that have been “donated” by much bigger entities (e.g. Google donating Wave). This is the right thing to do from a helping the world perspective, but it’s clearly hurt ASF’s reputation. They should simply start saying no to some of these dead/dying projects. Or at the very least brand them differently.
      - rbowen 3y ago
        It's important to note that the ASF did say no to Wave. It never made it out of the Incubator, because it was unable to build an active user community.
        mindcrime 3y ago
        And in addition, simply by virtue of going through the Incubator at all, these projects ensure that the source code is available under a well known, well understood, popular, ALv2 license - and the code, email archives, and other artifacts that were created are preserved by the ASF even when the project is sent to the Attic. This is still a net good for the world in general, IMO. And while it's not exactly common there have been forks of Attic'd projects outside of the ASF that went on to be useful to people.
- softwaredoug 3y ago
  Agreed... We are seeing dozens of database companies turn their OSS into basically proprietary shared code licenses. And we seem to still pretend its "open source" Collaboration, across companies, not ownership by one company is the root of open source. To do that you need some kind of governance model. Essentially "ownership" by one company is conducive to quick progress on specific problems, but not collaboration.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    The flipside is that companies don't seem all that interested in this sort of collaboration, though, nor should they be. It doesn't really make sense for a company that believes its edge is its technology to both give up the secret sauce and accept the dillution of that edge that comes from taking code from outside contributors. The modern version of "open source" is a natural evolution of the concept when this is how companies think.
  - AceJohnny2 3y ago
    To put it another way: many startups today have adopted the "Open Core" business model, and it's really more about marketing than actual open-source. "Open Core" means they open-source the core of their product portfolio, core which some enterprising people may use to develop applications on, but for others will really need the buy into the rest of the portfolio to get the best use out of.
    - AceJohnny2 3y ago
      I can't really fault companies for using this model. Development is expensive, and business models around open-source are hard. I mean, just look at what Red Hat ends up doing to fend off copycats. Getting people to try your product and also rely on it is a tricky proposition.
      - softwaredoug 3y ago
        I don't fault them either. In fact I'm a big fan of many of those companies. I think the fault is with the consumers. Many companies consume but do not participate in open source. All the incentives are there for companies to become vendors rather than participants (stewards?) of an open source project.
- morelisp 3y ago
  More like the ASF lost any claim to inherently support good governance with OOo.
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    Can’t good-governance your way out of a stinker project.
    - pgeorgi 3y ago
      Of course that's possible, Apache even has a process for that: https://attic.apache.org/ https://attic.apache.org/
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Governance alone doesn't help, if there isn't a way to pay the bills. It was cool to be a UNIX/FOSS zealot during the late 90's while still getting monetary support. Writing M$ on the email signature and such. Eventually I had to find a way to pay my bills.
  - raxxorraxor 3y ago
    In the current market you reliably can do both. Nobody in software can deny the importance of open source software, if only for learning or training. Without FOSS, there would only be stagnation. You can even develop commercial software and still support FOSS. This isn't some think the kids of the 90s do. Most new open source projects are created by younger developers.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Try to make a living from open source desktop software, or open source games. Younger developers are re-discovering public domain and shareware, while rebranding them as open core.
      - pxc 3y ago
        > Try to make a living from [...] open source games. To me, many of the elements of political interest with free software in general don't really come into play with games (although some incidental issues, like privacy concerns, certainly do come into play in practice). Part of what makes software freedom urgent where it matters most is a very material dependency on software— it matters most when we depend on that software to make our livings, or to access medical care, or to access education. The stakes are lower for games, and I imagine that many people who care deeply about free software are still comfortable buying and running proprietary games. I know I am. I don't think there's a serious problem with making/selling proprietary games, either, even if you're generally committed to free software.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  > value of governance in OSS You are assuming that a strict and stable governance model is good for OSS. But often it is the least stable projects with lots of hostile forks and huge mailing list arguments which turn out to be the most successful projects. Strict and stable governance model is perhaps dull and turns away contributors who feel they will never get to the top of such a stable project with long timelines and complex procedures for everything.
  - softwaredoug 3y ago
    "Strict and stable" isn't quite the important feature, its being community-managed. Chaotic projects with lots of forks, and disorganized governance may be a sign that there is a strong community. If the chaos goes on forever, then you're going to probably lose people to the drama (or the forks themselves will eventually stabilize). If the chaos is short, spasmatic, and leads to a better outcome, then it was overall a good thing in the project's governance.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    It's the difference between: > "Ask bob on discord and he'll give you commit access to the repo" and: > "First you need to fill out the CLA and send 3 pull requests before you can then apply for committer access at the bi-monthly steering group committee. Present your case in an email to them at least 28 days beforehand, and make sure an existing committer seconds it"
  - TylerE 3y ago
    There are things people argue over, and things no one cares about.
  - hodgesrm 3y ago
    Can you give a couple examples of such projects?
- j-a-a-p 3y ago
  "Open Source" is such a strong brand nowadays, it suffices to claim to be open source. Even after so many projects flipped their license.
giamma 3y ago
I think this is a wrong perceptions. Projects come and go, based on adoption, community interest, technology evolution, trends... There are still a lot of projects at Apache. Check their last annual report [1], especially the sponsors and the statistics sections. [1] https://apache.org/foundation/docs/FY2023AnnualReport.pdf https://apache.org/foundation/docs/FY2023AnnualReport.pdf
- mistrial9 3y ago
  those Fortune 500 funders are slightly balanced by "pineapple fund" !
ianburrell 3y ago
Apache has lots of active projects. But they are mostly data analysis. At work, we use Airflow to run Spark jobs which uses Hadoop and Hive. Apache also has a lot of dead projects that never got picked up by users. Apache should have a marker for zombie projects so people don't start using them.
- giamma 3y ago
  Well, the same would hold for github or any other open source container. When I find something interesting on github, before deciding to use it, I check the number of committers and the commit history/frequency. Anyone can do the same for Apache projects.
  - renegade-otter 3y ago
    GitHub is an unfiltered firehose. The job of something like ASF is to curate. It used to be that an "Apache project" meant the same as "solid, popular, vouched for, safe to use".
- rbowen 3y ago
  The ASF does have a marker for retired projects. See https://attic.apache.org/ https://attic.apache.org/ Software projects have a natural lifecycle, and since we've been around for almost 30 years, there's going to be a number of projects in that state. However, the ASF doesn't force projects into the attic while they still have a community around them. OpenOffice is an edge case - there's still a project community, primarily around templates and other end-user-centric activities. They're just not doing much with the actual software any more. Granted, there's room to disagree as to whether 1) the ASF should force projects into the attic and 2) whether OO actually has an active community. But the Foundation's position is that this is the decision of the project, not one to be forced top-down by the Board.
- pavon 3y ago
  They do have the Apache Attic for that purpose, but they typically defer to the project maintainers to make the decision to retire a project, unless there are no longer any maintainers.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
wiremine 3y ago
Go to die, or go to provide incremental improvements? Maybe a bit of both? Either said, it's a good question. Some projects are going to die, and I don't think that's the fault of the organization behind it. I'd love to see a more detailed analysis of all the current projects at Apache, and their growth/decline, and a breakdown of _why_ they're growing or declining. Maybe Apache is the problem, maybe it isn't.
talent_deprived 3y ago
> Apache is the place OSS goes to retire/die Fortunately many of us in the world disagree with the dystopian warped view.
- taylorbuley 3y ago
  Thankfully, yes. But I still see an unmaintained project as a broken window, of sorts, that mars an otherwise nice open-source edifice.
- phkahler 3y ago
  >> > Apache is the place OSS goes to retire/die >> Fortunately many of us in the world disagree with the dystopian warped view. They would still be doing everyone a favor if they shut down OpenOffice completely and hand the trademark over to The Document Foundation. The name is better than LibreOffice, and the fact that a grossly outdated version of OpenOffice is what people will be finding is detrimental to the project. Most the developers and the code have moved on, but the name and a bunch of old code lives on with ASF for no good reason. Seriously there is NO reason for it except the completely selfish (and harmful to others) excuse that ASF can claim to be the stewards of OpenOffice. In my dystopian imaginary world they are even paid to maintain this situation to prevent more widespread adoption of LibreOffice.
AndyMcConachie 3y ago
I was recently searching around for a good enterprise search engine and wanted something OSS. I found Apache Lucene and so far I really like it. It's got documentation, a clear release schedule, and I know lots of other people use it. I was happy to hear that it's Apache because it probably means it won't die because one maintainer goes away. Maybe it's silly, but if I find a project is Apache it gives me a good feeling. Of course some of their projects die. That's OSS. But that's not something you can solve for. Even paid software goes away after awhile.
geertj 3y ago
> I've felt for a long time (maybe even a decade) that Apache is the place OSS goes to retire/die. It's a bit too strong as others have pointed out that there are very active projects under the Apache umbrella. But I do feel that there's a core of truth in this. Specifically, Apache does appear to provide a "way out" for large enterprise customers that want to dump non-strategic (to them) code somewhere and not necessarily invest in it. Seems something that could be solvable on the ASF side by having additional criteria before accepting projects, and maybe require a certain level of activity for continued membership.
no_wizard 3y ago
Unless it’s one of their many durable Java projects, or the web server that bares its name. I think some things were (are?) bad fits for the ASF and languished as a result. If you do a lot of development in the JVM ecosystem though you’ll find there’s a lot of ASF projects that are actively used and maintained
indymike 3y ago
> If a project ends up in Apache it feels to me like it has gone out to pasture. There are many Apache Foundation projects that are active and important or complete and important. Unfortunately OpenOffice is not any of the above, and it was that way almost from the beginning. The original OO community largely went with LibreOffice. They did not like the interference of Oracle and later IBM in their project's governance. So, Apache got the trademarks from Oracle and a community of people who were largely not maintainers. This put Apache, almost from day one, in position to be competing with the community of one of their own projects.
pjmlp 3y ago
At least in what concerns Java projects, Apache foundation was always quite relevant.
- EFreethought 3y ago
  A lot of the relevant Java projects either started there or got brought in pretty early.
MPSimmons 3y ago
Apache is kind of the CNCF of the 2000s, I think.
- mekster 3y ago
  Or plane graveyard.
cameldrv 3y ago
A big part of the problem is that the Apache foundation has become sort of a dumping ground for OSS projects where the corporate sponsor doesn’t want to be responsible anymore. They pull the full time developers and donate the project. In this context it’s not surprising that these projects “die”, because they’ve lost most or all of their contributors.
JoshuaRogers 3y ago
At work I've lovingly but sadly referred to Apache as the "Crazy Cat Lady of Software." From the outside it looks like they're willing to take on any project that someone wants to give away regardless of whether they have the capacity to provide maintenance / governance of it themselves. While I do love the preservation aspect of it, seeing that a project is maintained by Apache rings the same "Sure, but is the project already dead" bells in my head that I hear when I see a project from Google. In both cases, the name brings the concern that a project might be on its way out.
_ea1k 3y ago
I feel like that is often true for organizations like this. Eclipse Foundation isn't much better. Sometimes it is the place projects go when their original author wants to kill them but doesn't want to say they are doing that.

brand 3y ago

It seems that “younger generation” programmers underestimate the value of governance in OSS. The recent Terraform kerluffle couldn’t have happened if Terraform was in the ASF, etc.

zoogeny 3y ago
There is a quote: "When you stop growing you start dying" (William S. Burroughs). I am not sure I believe that the kind of governance that Apache is providing is helping to grow the projects under its supervision. Your comparison to Terraform is also interesting. Apache Kafka, for example, has been absorbed by Amazon (MSK). Apache Spark is Amazon EMR. Just looking through Amazon's paid service offering I find several Apache projects rebranded and for sale. A cynical take could be that Apache is an org that helps companies like Amazon profit off of the work of open source developers.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  But with software, sometimes there comes a time when it really should stop growing. When any further "enhancements" make the software worse. It's something I've seen countless times in my life. A piece of software achieves something pretty close to perfection for its task, but the self-imposed "need" to continue development on it ruins it.
  - rzzzt 3y ago
    Does it read mail and/or contain a subset of Common Lisp?
    - worthless-trash 3y ago
      All software will eventually grow to send email. And lets be honest, if its not written in lisp, are you really trying ?
  - systems_glitch 3y ago
    Absolutely. Some things go into bugfix-only mode because their code has reached perfection for the 99% use case.
    - broeng 3y ago
      And then we fear it's a dead project, and move on in search for something else with active contributors.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        Certainly not everyone. Personally, I pay little attention to that sort of thing at all. I don't care if it's a "dead" project or not -- as long as the software is meeting my needs, that's the only thing that matters. If/when it stops doing that, then I'll look for alternatives.
        systems_glitch 3y ago
        Same here. I run Slackware on all of my engineering and development workstations. It does what I want, nothing gets hosed when running updates, and I don't feel like my main job is sysadmin. But I keep getting told I need a "Slackware intervention" :P
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    Hot take: Python 3. Totally unnecessary.
- augustk 3y ago
  Why do you think software needs to grow?
  - kuchenbecker 3y ago
    It needs at least a stable set of users, but maintaining a set of users is essentially managing the set of people onboarding and the set of people migrating off. If you're shrinking then a competitor is providing better options, or your problem space has shifted.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - dale_glass 3y ago
    Software as big as Open Office may not need to technically grow, but still needs a lot of work to stay current. Various dependencies, like XML parsers, JPEG decoders, HTTP libraries, etc, change over time, drop deprecated APIs and need the main application to adapt. It'll also bump into the tech changing around it -- UTF8, year 2038, 64 bit CPUs, etc. For a project this size it takes work just to stand still and keep it comfortably buildable on a modern Linux distro.
- znpy 3y ago
  > "When you stop growing you start dying" death is part of life though, and the only thing that grows without and end is cancer (quite literally). I don't see why project can't just be considered "done": yeah you update dependencies and make it work with new/current formats, but essentially it's done. The use case is now clearly defined, implemented and tested.
- rbowen 3y ago
  I'm fascinated at your characterization of both Kafka and Spark as being absorbed by Amazon. AWS offers hosted versions of each. They are not, as you say "rebranded and for sale", but rather are hosted services, running whatever upstream releases. But to say that the project as been absorbed by AWS (in either case) is simply false. Spark is developed by a community of numerous companies, of which Databricks is usually most prominent. Kafka is likewise a community of several organizations, of which Confluent tends to be the most influential. Yes, Apache is (and always has been) business-friendly. The license enables companies to profit on those projects. But, for the most part, companies that benefit from those project also contribute back to them, as a way to ensure sustainability. That's how it is supposed to work.
- toast0 3y ago
  > A cynical take could be that Apache is an org that helps companies like Amazon profit off of the work of open source developers. Apache httpd certainly helped tons of companies profit, so helping companies profit doesn't seem off-brand.
debacle 3y ago
Terraform wouldn't be in the ASF unless it was dead, is the point.
- KptMarchewa 3y ago
  There is giant amount of actively worked upon, very heavily used software projects in Apache: Airflow, Spark, Flink, Kafka, Lucene and a lot of foundations on which those are written or use: Parquet, Arrow, Iceberg.
  - CuriousCosmic 3y ago
    But are they web scale? (/s if that isn't clear)
  - addicted 3y ago
    Maybe the real problem is that the ASF has been adopting too many abandoned projects that have been “donated” by much bigger entities (e.g. Google donating Wave). This is the right thing to do from a helping the world perspective, but it’s clearly hurt ASF’s reputation. They should simply start saying no to some of these dead/dying projects. Or at the very least brand them differently.
    - rbowen 3y ago
      It's important to note that the ASF did say no to Wave. It never made it out of the Incubator, because it was unable to build an active user community.
      - mindcrime 3y ago
        And in addition, simply by virtue of going through the Incubator at all, these projects ensure that the source code is available under a well known, well understood, popular, ALv2 license - and the code, email archives, and other artifacts that were created are preserved by the ASF even when the project is sent to the Attic. This is still a net good for the world in general, IMO. And while it's not exactly common there have been forks of Attic'd projects outside of the ASF that went on to be useful to people.
softwaredoug 3y ago
Agreed... We are seeing dozens of database companies turn their OSS into basically proprietary shared code licenses. And we seem to still pretend its "open source" Collaboration, across companies, not ownership by one company is the root of open source. To do that you need some kind of governance model. Essentially "ownership" by one company is conducive to quick progress on specific problems, but not collaboration.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  The flipside is that companies don't seem all that interested in this sort of collaboration, though, nor should they be. It doesn't really make sense for a company that believes its edge is its technology to both give up the secret sauce and accept the dillution of that edge that comes from taking code from outside contributors. The modern version of "open source" is a natural evolution of the concept when this is how companies think.
- AceJohnny2 3y ago
  To put it another way: many startups today have adopted the "Open Core" business model, and it's really more about marketing than actual open-source. "Open Core" means they open-source the core of their product portfolio, core which some enterprising people may use to develop applications on, but for others will really need the buy into the rest of the portfolio to get the best use out of.
  - AceJohnny2 3y ago
    I can't really fault companies for using this model. Development is expensive, and business models around open-source are hard. I mean, just look at what Red Hat ends up doing to fend off copycats. Getting people to try your product and also rely on it is a tricky proposition.
    - softwaredoug 3y ago
      I don't fault them either. In fact I'm a big fan of many of those companies. I think the fault is with the consumers. Many companies consume but do not participate in open source. All the incentives are there for companies to become vendors rather than participants (stewards?) of an open source project.
morelisp 3y ago
More like the ASF lost any claim to inherently support good governance with OOo.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  Can’t good-governance your way out of a stinker project.
  - pgeorgi 3y ago
    Of course that's possible, Apache even has a process for that: https://attic.apache.org/ https://attic.apache.org/
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pjmlp 3y ago
Governance alone doesn't help, if there isn't a way to pay the bills. It was cool to be a UNIX/FOSS zealot during the late 90's while still getting monetary support. Writing M$ on the email signature and such. Eventually I had to find a way to pay my bills.
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  In the current market you reliably can do both. Nobody in software can deny the importance of open source software, if only for learning or training. Without FOSS, there would only be stagnation. You can even develop commercial software and still support FOSS. This isn't some think the kids of the 90s do. Most new open source projects are created by younger developers.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Try to make a living from open source desktop software, or open source games. Younger developers are re-discovering public domain and shareware, while rebranding them as open core.
    - pxc 3y ago
      > Try to make a living from [...] open source games. To me, many of the elements of political interest with free software in general don't really come into play with games (although some incidental issues, like privacy concerns, certainly do come into play in practice). Part of what makes software freedom urgent where it matters most is a very material dependency on software— it matters most when we depend on that software to make our livings, or to access medical care, or to access education. The stakes are lower for games, and I imagine that many people who care deeply about free software are still comfortable buying and running proprietary games. I know I am. I don't think there's a serious problem with making/selling proprietary games, either, even if you're generally committed to free software.
londons_explore 3y ago
> value of governance in OSS You are assuming that a strict and stable governance model is good for OSS. But often it is the least stable projects with lots of hostile forks and huge mailing list arguments which turn out to be the most successful projects. Strict and stable governance model is perhaps dull and turns away contributors who feel they will never get to the top of such a stable project with long timelines and complex procedures for everything.
- softwaredoug 3y ago
  "Strict and stable" isn't quite the important feature, its being community-managed. Chaotic projects with lots of forks, and disorganized governance may be a sign that there is a strong community. If the chaos goes on forever, then you're going to probably lose people to the drama (or the forks themselves will eventually stabilize). If the chaos is short, spasmatic, and leads to a better outcome, then it was overall a good thing in the project's governance.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  It's the difference between: > "Ask bob on discord and he'll give you commit access to the repo" and: > "First you need to fill out the CLA and send 3 pull requests before you can then apply for committer access at the bi-monthly steering group committee. Present your case in an email to them at least 28 days beforehand, and make sure an existing committer seconds it"
- TylerE 3y ago
  There are things people argue over, and things no one cares about.
- hodgesrm 3y ago
  Can you give a couple examples of such projects?
j-a-a-p 3y ago
"Open Source" is such a strong brand nowadays, it suffices to claim to be open source. Even after so many projects flipped their license.

giamma 3y ago

I think this is a wrong perceptions. Projects come and go, based on adoption, community interest, technology evolution, trends... There are still a lot of projects at Apache. Check their last annual report [1], especially the sponsors and the statistics sections. [1] https://apache.org/foundation/docs/FY2023AnnualReport.pdf https://apache.org/foundation/docs/FY2023AnnualReport.pdf

mistrial9 3y ago
those Fortune 500 funders are slightly balanced by "pineapple fund" !

ianburrell 3y ago

Apache has lots of active projects. But they are mostly data analysis. At work, we use Airflow to run Spark jobs which uses Hadoop and Hive. Apache also has a lot of dead projects that never got picked up by users. Apache should have a marker for zombie projects so people don't start using them.

giamma 3y ago
Well, the same would hold for github or any other open source container. When I find something interesting on github, before deciding to use it, I check the number of committers and the commit history/frequency. Anyone can do the same for Apache projects.
- renegade-otter 3y ago
  GitHub is an unfiltered firehose. The job of something like ASF is to curate. It used to be that an "Apache project" meant the same as "solid, popular, vouched for, safe to use".
rbowen 3y ago
The ASF does have a marker for retired projects. See https://attic.apache.org/ https://attic.apache.org/ Software projects have a natural lifecycle, and since we've been around for almost 30 years, there's going to be a number of projects in that state. However, the ASF doesn't force projects into the attic while they still have a community around them. OpenOffice is an edge case - there's still a project community, primarily around templates and other end-user-centric activities. They're just not doing much with the actual software any more. Granted, there's room to disagree as to whether 1) the ASF should force projects into the attic and 2) whether OO actually has an active community. But the Foundation's position is that this is the decision of the project, not one to be forced top-down by the Board.
pavon 3y ago
They do have the Apache Attic for that purpose, but they typically defer to the project maintainers to make the decision to retire a project, unless there are no longer any maintainers.

deleted 3y ago

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wiremine 3y ago

Go to die, or go to provide incremental improvements? Maybe a bit of both? Either said, it's a good question. Some projects are going to die, and I don't think that's the fault of the organization behind it. I'd love to see a more detailed analysis of all the current projects at Apache, and their growth/decline, and a breakdown of _why_ they're growing or declining. Maybe Apache is the problem, maybe it isn't.

talent_deprived 3y ago

> Apache is the place OSS goes to retire/die Fortunately many of us in the world disagree with the dystopian warped view.

taylorbuley 3y ago
Thankfully, yes. But I still see an unmaintained project as a broken window, of sorts, that mars an otherwise nice open-source edifice.
phkahler 3y ago
>> > Apache is the place OSS goes to retire/die >> Fortunately many of us in the world disagree with the dystopian warped view. They would still be doing everyone a favor if they shut down OpenOffice completely and hand the trademark over to The Document Foundation. The name is better than LibreOffice, and the fact that a grossly outdated version of OpenOffice is what people will be finding is detrimental to the project. Most the developers and the code have moved on, but the name and a bunch of old code lives on with ASF for no good reason. Seriously there is NO reason for it except the completely selfish (and harmful to others) excuse that ASF can claim to be the stewards of OpenOffice. In my dystopian imaginary world they are even paid to maintain this situation to prevent more widespread adoption of LibreOffice.

AndyMcConachie 3y ago

I was recently searching around for a good enterprise search engine and wanted something OSS. I found Apache Lucene and so far I really like it. It's got documentation, a clear release schedule, and I know lots of other people use it. I was happy to hear that it's Apache because it probably means it won't die because one maintainer goes away. Maybe it's silly, but if I find a project is Apache it gives me a good feeling. Of course some of their projects die. That's OSS. But that's not something you can solve for. Even paid software goes away after awhile.

geertj 3y ago

> I've felt for a long time (maybe even a decade) that Apache is the place OSS goes to retire/die. It's a bit too strong as others have pointed out that there are very active projects under the Apache umbrella. But I do feel that there's a core of truth in this. Specifically, Apache does appear to provide a "way out" for large enterprise customers that want to dump non-strategic (to them) code somewhere and not necessarily invest in it. Seems something that could be solvable on the ASF side by having additional criteria before accepting projects, and maybe require a certain level of activity for continued membership.

no_wizard 3y ago

Unless it’s one of their many durable Java projects, or the web server that bares its name. I think some things were (are?) bad fits for the ASF and languished as a result. If you do a lot of development in the JVM ecosystem though you’ll find there’s a lot of ASF projects that are actively used and maintained

indymike 3y ago

> If a project ends up in Apache it feels to me like it has gone out to pasture. There are many Apache Foundation projects that are active and important or complete and important. Unfortunately OpenOffice is not any of the above, and it was that way almost from the beginning. The original OO community largely went with LibreOffice. They did not like the interference of Oracle and later IBM in their project's governance. So, Apache got the trademarks from Oracle and a community of people who were largely not maintainers. This put Apache, almost from day one, in position to be competing with the community of one of their own projects.

pjmlp 3y ago

At least in what concerns Java projects, Apache foundation was always quite relevant.

EFreethought 3y ago
A lot of the relevant Java projects either started there or got brought in pretty early.

MPSimmons 3y ago

Apache is kind of the CNCF of the 2000s, I think.

mekster 3y ago
Or plane graveyard.

cameldrv 3y ago

A big part of the problem is that the Apache foundation has become sort of a dumping ground for OSS projects where the corporate sponsor doesn’t want to be responsible anymore. They pull the full time developers and donate the project. In this context it’s not surprising that these projects “die”, because they’ve lost most or all of their contributors.

JoshuaRogers 3y ago

At work I've lovingly but sadly referred to Apache as the "Crazy Cat Lady of Software." From the outside it looks like they're willing to take on any project that someone wants to give away regardless of whether they have the capacity to provide maintenance / governance of it themselves. While I do love the preservation aspect of it, seeing that a project is maintained by Apache rings the same "Sure, but is the project already dead" bells in my head that I hear when I see a project from Google. In both cases, the name brings the concern that a project might be on its way out.

_ea1k 3y ago

I feel like that is often true for organizations like this. Eclipse Foundation isn't much better. Sometimes it is the place projects go when their original author wants to kill them but doesn't want to say they are doing that.