Apache Foundation celebrates 10 years

By Alex Handy

December 1, 2009 —

It's been a long time since the National Center for Supercomputing Applications held sway over the way the Web worked. But it is with the NCSA that the story of Apache begins.

Five years after Web pioneers from around the Internet began modifying the NCSA HTTPd server for their various business purposes, the Apache Software Foundation was formed. Ten years after that, the ASF has become one of the most influential and successful open-source bodies in the world.

At ApacheCon, held the first week of November in Oakland, software developers and IT administrators came from around the world to learn about the more than 100 projects now under the Apache Foundation's umbrella. It was a markedly different time and place for a Foundation that began as just another free software movement with only one project.

Justin Erenkrantz, president of the ASF, said that the sheer size of the ASF is the biggest change for him since he joined in 2001.

“It's gotten a lot bigger,” said Erenkrantz. “When we started out in 2001, it was maybe five or six projects. There was the Apache HTTP server, there was this thing called Jakarta…Since then, there has been a tremendous explosion of projects: There are 100 different projects [at ASF now], about 75 top-level, and 30 in the incubator.

"Apache Labs is a place for individuals to say, 'I want a sandbox to play with, I'm not sure if it merits being a community yet.' You look at that, and it's a tremendous scale change when you're only dealing with 100, maybe 200 committers at most, and now we're dealing with 2,000 committers on a daily basis.”

Not without controversy
Over the years, the Apache foundation has seen its share of controversy. But when compared to other free software foundations and groups, the ASF has been relatively innocuous.

Aside from public scraps with Microsoft and Sun Microsystems over the years, neither company has been willing to sever ties with the foundation. Indeed, Microsoft's IIS HTTP server has long had only the Apache Web Server as its primary competition, and yet Microsoft recently joined the Apache foundation.

Compare that to how the Free Software Foundation is perceived by major businesses. Bernard Golden, CEO of Navica and author of “Succeeding With Open Source,” said that the ASF won over business users with its less-restrictive licenses. The FSF, by contrast, typically engages with corporations through legal actions and threats.

“The license the ASF uses does not bring them into conflict with commercial companies," he said. "There's no one to say, 'You're ruining our business by giving away free software or making a derivative work.' It's not like it's some vendor.

"The Apache Software Foundation is us: whoever's participating. They've brought together disparate companies, companies that are actually competitors. And the people in it are pretty nice, they're not polarizing people like some members of the free software community. They're too nice. There's nobody who goes, 'They really screwed us.' ”

Erenkrantz said that keeping competitors at the table to collaborate actually spurs other companies to join up for fear of being left out.

“As people say 'IBM is here, HP is here, Sun is here,' so Microsoft looks and says, 'Everyone else is here, why aren't we here?' But IBM may want features x, y or z, but these companies have to understand it will have to pass the community test," he said.

"The big thing in our social dynamic is that any person can veto. They can stop and say, 'This is wrong, stop it.' That person may be just contributing at night, but they have the same amount of influence as the person with a 9-to-5 job. It's not very commonly used but it’s a way to get consensus."

Indeed, the only remaining controversy at the Apache foundation is its continuing dispute with Sun Microsystems over the release of the Test Compatibility Kit for the Apache Harmony project. Geir Magnusson, creator of the Harmony project and an ASF board member, said that he has stepped back from Harmony for now, but he still hopes the Oracle acquisition of Sun will yield the release of the TCK.

For its part, Sun continues to maintain that its employees cannot make forward-looking statements due to the acquisition by Oracle, and thus cannot discuss the future possible release of the TCK. But you can be sure that Sun's representative at ApacheCon, Simon Phipps, chief open source officer, had a piece of birthday cake anyway.

Even when the ASF is feuding with a member organization, it's still willing to share its birthday cake.

Related Search Term(s): Apache

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