<story><title>Apache considered harmful</title><url>http://www.mikealrogers.com/posts/apache-considered-harmful.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jaaron</author><text>Ok, there&apos;s a lot to cover here.&lt;p&gt;First off, the Apache Software Foundation isn&apos;t trying to absorb anyone or anything. Projects and people come to the ASF. It&apos;s a specific policy of the Foundation to NOT solicit projects. If someone says they&apos;re representing Apache and soliciting projects, they&apos;re wrong.&lt;p&gt;Secondly, Apache is very opinionated about how projects should be run. This comes from years of experience as not only a successful project, but as a successful non-profit organization overseeing dozens of projects. If a community doesn&apos;t like the ASF&apos;s style or rules (such as no dictators, benevolent or otherwise), they don&apos;t need to be there. No one wants to keep projects hostage. Part of the point of the Incubator is to get this figured out earlier than later.&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, about git and subversion. First off, there&apos;s increasing support for git at Apache (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.apache.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://git.apache.org/&lt;/a&gt;) but there are some serious drawbacks for use of git. Consider this: subversion was practically made for Apache in the way Linus made git for Linux. With that in mind, subversion isn&apos;t going anywhere at the ASF. Some of the rational is just plain stubbornness, but some of it goes straight to the core values of the Foundation.&lt;p&gt;Apache has become, for better or worse, the place where lots of projects go when they grow up. Growing up is hard to do. It&apos;s not fun. You have to do things like get a job, pay taxes, etc. When a project grows up, people start caring about who contributed what, under which license and making sure every line of code is legit. A lot of engineers don&apos;t care about this, but businesses and their lawyers do. A lot of the Apache Foundation &quot;bureaucracy&quot; is to handle this oversight and paperwork.&lt;p&gt;Git is an impressive tool and github is awesome for what it is, but it&apos;s not a non-profit foundation and it won&apos;t replace one. Confusing the Apache Software Foundation for your coding sandbox only suggests you don&apos;t understand the true purpose of either.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dscape</author><text>[this text was written by mikeal originally here but somehow got censored. gist exactly as he wrote it &lt;a href=&quot;https://gist.github.com/1387977&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://gist.github.com/1387977&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;p&gt;This is perhaps the most depressing response I&apos;ve received to my article.&lt;p&gt;As I said in my article this is far less about git and more about the chasm that has grown between Apache and the rest of the community.&lt;p&gt;Your first two points boil down to &quot;nobody makes you join Apache, if you don&apos;t like our policies then you can get out&quot;. How does this help Apache or its projects?&lt;p&gt;Apache could still be valuable to the community but this kind of stubborn attitude will insure that it continues to become irrelevant when it could be a leader.&lt;p&gt;I do understand the purpose of Apache and it is not hosting source code. That is the point I&apos;m trying to make. If that is not its value, and its policies around hosting that source are no longer beneficial to its projects, then it should change its policy.&lt;p&gt;I think that you, and many people in the ASF, have married the existing policies of Apache with the purposes for which they were created. While the intentions of the policies may still be relevant, and in my opinion correct, the policies themselves will not remain relevant forever in a field as rapidly evolving as technology and GitHub may just be the first example of Apache policy incompatibility with evolution of open source.</text></comment>
<story><title>Apache considered harmful</title><url>http://www.mikealrogers.com/posts/apache-considered-harmful.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jaaron</author><text>Ok, there&apos;s a lot to cover here.&lt;p&gt;First off, the Apache Software Foundation isn&apos;t trying to absorb anyone or anything. Projects and people come to the ASF. It&apos;s a specific policy of the Foundation to NOT solicit projects. If someone says they&apos;re representing Apache and soliciting projects, they&apos;re wrong.&lt;p&gt;Secondly, Apache is very opinionated about how projects should be run. This comes from years of experience as not only a successful project, but as a successful non-profit organization overseeing dozens of projects. If a community doesn&apos;t like the ASF&apos;s style or rules (such as no dictators, benevolent or otherwise), they don&apos;t need to be there. No one wants to keep projects hostage. Part of the point of the Incubator is to get this figured out earlier than later.&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, about git and subversion. First off, there&apos;s increasing support for git at Apache (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://git.apache.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://git.apache.org/&lt;/a&gt;) but there are some serious drawbacks for use of git. Consider this: subversion was practically made for Apache in the way Linus made git for Linux. With that in mind, subversion isn&apos;t going anywhere at the ASF. Some of the rational is just plain stubbornness, but some of it goes straight to the core values of the Foundation.&lt;p&gt;Apache has become, for better or worse, the place where lots of projects go when they grow up. Growing up is hard to do. It&apos;s not fun. You have to do things like get a job, pay taxes, etc. When a project grows up, people start caring about who contributed what, under which license and making sure every line of code is legit. A lot of engineers don&apos;t care about this, but businesses and their lawyers do. A lot of the Apache Foundation &quot;bureaucracy&quot; is to handle this oversight and paperwork.&lt;p&gt;Git is an impressive tool and github is awesome for what it is, but it&apos;s not a non-profit foundation and it won&apos;t replace one. Confusing the Apache Software Foundation for your coding sandbox only suggests you don&apos;t understand the true purpose of either.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>buff-a</author><text>There&apos;s no reason apache can&apos;t maintain its own &quot;legally authorative&quot; git repo. Nothing in the authors post suggest that he is confusing the ASF with a &quot;coding sandbox&quot;. Making that claim suggests to me that you are invested in the alternative and not thinking objectively.&lt;p&gt;And I disagree about subversion being &quot;made for Apache in the way Linus made git for Linux&quot;. Subversion is an utterly derivative implementation of any server based VCS in existence, where as git is an example of truly creative thought (not just from Linus) about what VCS should be for a large community that requires the accountability that you claim ASF requires.</text></comment>