Apache - Governance

Discussion

Provided by Stefan Merten in the Oekonux mailing list, January 2008:

"The following is an excerpt from an interview with Roy T. Fielding by Kai Tödter. Roy - among other interesting things - is one of the founders of the Apache Software Foundation and had a crucial role in developing `Apache HTTPD`_. The Apache HTTPD is the Web server software from Apache which were their original product and on its homepage proudly says:

Apache has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April 1996.

The interview was published in JavaSpektrum_ 06/07. I translated two answers which are of particular interest here.

Kai: Why is the Apache HTTP server so successful?

Roy: This has many reasons. We started with a great group of people where one half was from commercial organizations and the other were PhD students or "fresh" PhDs. Our development team was very diverse. A feature needed to be used (and tested) by at least one core developer in a live site before it was included in the server. Robert Thau developed an excellent modular architecture which was designed especially for the Web and which made extensions from third parties possible while at the same time kept the robust behavior of the server. We had no marketing division which burdened us with irrelevant features just because an analyst, a reporter or a manager thought it would be important. All our features have been tested on real productive sites before they went into the server base. But only after they have been checked and acknowledged by three independent developers.

Of course in addition the code is free and Open Source which has advantages in itself besides the quality of the resulting implementation. In the end this [the HTTPD web server -- SMn] is the printing press of the modern age. It would have been a tragedy to allow this to be controlled by a "for profit" company. In the end for a good part the long time success is a result of that we insisted on a cooperative development led by the group with a formal voting mechanism to settle disputes instead of a single benevolent dictator who decides everything. The project had over 50 core developers and more than six technical leaders at different points during its history. And it still runs with the same basic principles we defined in 1995.

Kai: Do you think that Open Source changes the (software) world?

Roy: It already has and many times. The Web is Open Source. The whole Internet infrastructure is Open Source. Most of the Closed Source software contains at least a little Open Source especially in the Java world. Day Software [the company where Roy works as chief scientist -- SMn] has several closed source products but nearly all our infrastructure software in these products is based on Open Source projects which we take part in and which in some cases even take a good share of the development effort. We used our Open Source engagement to attract some of the world best software developers to work for Day Software. In addition we get more advanced and intelligent feedback about our core software infrastructure. From Open Source users we get important feedback with a far higher chance than from commercial customers. Often the Open Source users come with detailed research and fixes." (http://www.sigs-datacom.de/sd/publications/js/index.htm)

More Information

1. Apache Software Foundation
2. Apache HTTPD: http://httpd.apache.org/