Apache Comes With Too Much Community Overhead?

drizzle writes "There's an interesting story on the Apache Marketing blog about whether or not Apache projects come with too much overhead, especially compared with other services or a roll-your-own approach. The article states, 'It's true that compared with SourceForge, Apache has a more rigorous management structure. The ASF has formalized processes and procedures that we believe represent best practices governance. All new projects must pass through an incubation period to ensure that all of the project's members have internalized these processes. However, each project's leadership has a tremendous amount of discretion in managing within this framework.' There is also a follow up article written by one of the httpd developers about 'What Apache brings to the table.' The article cites community, experience, legal framework, diversity, brand strength, and networking as reasons why developers and companies should consider bringing their projects over to Apache."

Tell me about it

I just setup an Apache web server for use at home, and now I've got 4 Apache developers living in my basement. When they showed up, they said they were my Apache community overhead and I had to let them stay there. Oh, and I apparently have to feed them too!

Re:Tell me about it

That's nothing, I installed Linux and now I've got a colony of penguins living in my freezer.

I'm dreading the upgrade to BSD.

Re:Tell me about it

I'm dreading the upgrade to BSD.

Don't Be [uberg33k.com]

vs. the Red Hat girl

Ok, whilst on free OS logo fetishes.

The Red Hat model.
http://www.madyiordache.com/TheRedHat.htm [madyiordache.com]

They must be doing something wrong

After all, it's not like they created one of the most popular open source apps of all time or anything like that.

Re:They must be doing something wrong

By this logic, MS makes the best microcomputer operating system in the world, and we all jsut better start using it.

There is always room for self reflection and improvement.

Re:They must be doing something wrong

No, I think the analogous observation is that Microsoft must be doing something right, because they've created the most popular operating system software (and probably software, period) ever. Which is true: they are doing something right. That something might be nefarious business practices and ruthless leveraging of a monopoly, but they're obviously doing a good job of it.

But what have they done recently?

Yes, Apache 1.x is enormously popular. But that's not where the work in the Apache project has gone recently; recently, they have been working on Apache 2.x, XML-related projects, and lots of other projects. Are you using any of those more recent projects? How much impact have those projects actually had? And is the amount of effort that has gone into them justified by their impact?

Re:But what have they done recently?

Actually, yes. I am part of the Spamassassin development effort.

BSDs?

How about the "overhead" of the various BSDs? FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD all have what could be described as "too much overhead" in their development model. Yet all three are considered among the shining stars of FOSS operating systems. Stable, robust, and "you know what you're getting".

BTW- Apache is developed primarily on FreeBSD [netcraft.com].

Re:BSDs?

It may be just me, but I think you're reading too much into a Netcraft report here. Outside of the fact that FreeBSD and Linux seem to be about equally present here, the platform on which the projects's *website* is hosted doesn't say anything about the platform the project itself is developed on.

Case in point: openbsd.org is hosted on Solaris [netcraft.com]. Does that mean that OpenBSD is primarily developed on Solaris? Of course not. And the same thing goes for Apache, too. It's still possible that Apache is primarily developed on FreeBSD, of course, but a Netcraft report doesn't say anything about whether it is.

Uh, what?

You want to do a project? Okay, well nobody is forcing you to work with Apache. The Apache community keeps consistently turning out good products. This tells me they're doing something right.

Yeah, so with sourceforge you don't have to spend as much time on organizational matters. And also on sourceforge 98% of the projects are stalled out in the planning stage. I don't see an improvement there.

configuring apache #1 complaint, still unaddressed

There is also a follow up article written by one of the httpd developers about 'What Apache brings to the table.' The article cites community, experience, legal framework, diversity, brand strength, and networking as reasons why developers and companies should consider bringing their projects over to Apache."

Two words why you shouldn't use Apache unless you absolutely need to (and most apache users don't NEED apache): configuration complexity.

Apache's configuration file hasn't changed dramatically since the days of v1.3, and it's still an absolute train wreck. It is seconded in nightmarish complexity and eccentricities by Sendmail- and barely at that. See the old slashdot story Why I hate The Apache Webserver [slashdot.org].

I have an idea. Let's see replies here, suggesting Apache alternatives that are a)lightweight b)easy to configure c)open source with BSD or GPL (or similar) licensing. Why? IMHO, the Apache group has gotten a little too comfy with their market dominance and years of blind faith from unix users. Sounds like it's time to remind them that especially if you're already on an open-source platform, you have a lot of choices.

Let's see lots of people trying out different webservers, helping improve them if they come across problems, and helping integrate these different webservers into distributions better, and so on. (That debian package for "joeserve" out of date? Help update it! Init scripts a mess? Spend 15 minutes coding up some improvements and email in a diff to the maintainer. Etc.)

Re:Dunno ..

fimbulvetr@media:/etc/apache2$ grep MaxKeepAliveRequests apache2.conf
# MaxKeepAliveRequests: The maximum number of requests to allow
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
fimbulvetr@media:/etc/apache2$ grep StartServers apache2.conf
# StartServers ......... number of server processes to start
StartServers 5

Seems that they're documented enough to figure out a barebones configuration. I realize you're pointing out it's complexity and these examples are nothing but trees in the forest, and there are plenty more, but the point is that they _are_ documented. Apache is an extremely powerful and flexible webserver. For light servers, it's easy to get it up and running right away (by keeping the defaults) - and the reverse is true - it takes very little work to get a default httpd.conf to run in a highload environment (assuming you're running in a pretty standard one).

Now, if you need a super custom setup - it's not such a huge leap for the developers (and even the guy at apache who is the boss of what gets put in the default conf) to presume that the person needing it in a custom environment knows apache pretty well and knows what they need to use in the configuration file.

Finally, I do think it is reasonable to say that people who setup a website should take the responsibility of knowing, at least the basics, of running websites. Even if this means gathering more than a cursory understanding of the workings of apache or any other webserver, it is certainly going to be more beneficial for them than sitting around bitching about the complexities he doesn't want to learn.

Re:configuring apache #1 complaint, still unaddres

You have to be kidding me? XML? Are you out of your mind? Apparently you've drank the XML koolaid and you're parroting it's usefulness for everything but ending world hunger. Almost every OSS project I use relies on the ease and simplicity of text configuration files. Of the few XML configuration files I've ever used, I've been left with a disgustingly horrible taste in my mouth afterwords.

Some of use don't want some GUI to do our configurations, and we certainly don't want to be at the mercy of one. When the GUI breaks or doesn't work (It's KDE only, it's gnome only, Xorg isn't installed, one doesn't exist yet, the ones available don't support these new options yet, ad infinium), we don't want to have to construct super perl scripts with XML capabilities to do mass changes in configuration files. Some of you might be fine with your tomcat's server.xml file being 1500 lines and the accompanying bloat, but I for one choose less complexity, even if the only advantage is controlling configurations more efficiently.

Re:configuring apache #1 complaint, still unaddres

If you want simple, static content, thttpd [acme.com] is stupidly tiny, stupidly scalable, and way faster than Apache. Unfortunately it uses the old fork model for dealing with CGI scripts which make it quite slow as doing that (but no worse than the old NCSA httpd). It has a number of interesting features, such as per-filetype bandwidth throttling (so you can specify that MP3 files only get transferred at 10kB/sec), but also has some suprising omissions --- the MIME type database is hard-coded, and it only handles HTTP 1.1. But if you have a simple site based mainly around static pages, thttpd is probably ideal for your purposes.

Re:configuring apache #1 complaint, still unaddres

Or if you want something smaller than Apache and a little more than just static pages try http://www.lighttpd.net/ [lighttpd.net]. It is secure and beats Apache 2 performance wise and the configuration takes only a few minutes. It runs on my small server for months now and is certainly worth a look.

Configuration complexity

Yes, Apache (Web server) is somewhat hard to configure. There's a large file with a lot of (documented) features and settings, and a lot of ways to go wrong there.

On the other hand, Apache is incredibly flexible: You can use it as a proxy, it does ssl, it fronts for Java Web servers, it rewrites URLs, it authenticates, it slices, it dices and I'm probably just scratching the surface.

Someone who knows his way around the config file - and that's really the only crucial thing to know about Apache - is able to get it to sing and dance. The header in the file warns people to read in-depth documentation rather than relying on comments in the file. There is documentation, there are books. If you're going to play at being a 'professional' Web admin, then you need some of this stuff.

For the less seriously inclined Web maker, programs like Webmin let you fiddle with a subset of Apache settings through a HTML front end. On an even broader front, many Web site hosters provide a dumbed-down interface that allows only a small subset of configuration options and keeps the user from doing anything really stupid.

And for anyone not covered above, yes, I'd recommend getting a simpler Web server. Personally, I find Tomcat a little easier to configure than Apache, but that's just me. I'm sure there are dramatically simpler products. Hell, lots of people have written their own!

The discussion in this topic is not about the complexity of using the Apache Web server, but the complexity of managing an Apache project. I'm not sure if I'd be perfectly happy "doing" an OS project under Apache, but... that's what choice is about, right?

Re:Configuration complexity

On the other hand, Apache is incredibly flexible: You can use it as a proxy, it does ssl, it fronts for Java Web servers, it rewrites URLs, it authenticates, it slices, it dices and I'm probably just scratching the surface.

You're exactly right, and your parent poster is exactly wrong. Attention, Please, Everyone:

EASE OF USE DOES NOT INDICATE A BETTER PRODUCT.

Apache is incredibly powerful. There's a reason it's the most popular webserver in use today, by far. And, with most linux distros, it's relatively easy to configure given the default configuration file.

The grandparent poster seems to suffer from the "I can't figure out how to do it in 5 minutes, therefore it's too hard" syndrome. Well, guess what? Work harder, or find a webserver that's easier to configure. For starters, there are any number of graphical (and ironically, web based) configuration utilities for apache. See ApacheGUI, Apacheconf, and Webmin. Aside from that, if the big bad config file scares you, maybe IIS is for you - you know, checkboxes and dropdown menus and insecurities.

But, seriously, the ratio of (Size and complexity of apache config file) to (complexity of the program) is very reasonable. I worked at a linux / solaris based webhosting company for almost 3 years. It took me about 2 or 3 months before I was completely comfortable working with almost all facets of httpd.conf. I understood the general idea in about a week, and there are still some parts that I'm fuzzy on, or don't get, or would need to google, but a couple of years ago, I could have almost written a config file by hand. They're seriously not that long, if you take out the commented sections (which are, of course, there to hold your hand). By contrast, I only scratched the surface of the sendmail config file.

Basically, my post boils down to: You can understand the basics of the apache webserver in an hour with a tutorial, google, and a test box to play with. Most of the time, the default options will work for you. There is almost no end to the amount of apache documentation available for you. And there's no need to understand the intensely complex aspects of the webserver outside of specific instances. For basic usage (as with most programs), stick close to the defaults, and google for answers to any questions you have.

Just because You, grandparent-poster, can't understand the apache config file in 5 minutes doesn't mean that the whole project should be scrapped. Every part of the config file serves a purpose. Any new project you create will need to have all the variables in the current project defined, or it will be less capable than apache. Please, take the time to learn what you're doing, and come up with real problems that need real solutions.

Just as an aside: vi versus Notepad.exe - Which is better?
vi is more cryptic, by far.
vi takes longer to learn
vi doesn't look as nice
Notepad is very easy to use
Notepad is graphical

However, once you take the time to learn vi, you'll see that it's difficulty in learning, once surmounted, leads to a much more powerful, capable text editor.

~Will

yes we had a similar problem

especially compared with other services or a roll-your-own approach

...but that was in college on weekend nights.

Everyone missed the boat...

Out of curiousity, did any of the above posters actually read the article? Or even the Slashdot post?

This isn't about Apache's Web Server at all. It's about the Apache foundation, and running projects with them. Apache's web server is just an example of a project that is run under the Apache Foundation... and any bloat / hard configuration in httpd has little to do with Apache Foundation's "overhead".

Tough Call.

I'm not going to bash the Apache Foundation or Apache Developers, or even Apache itself. It's all good work, and lots of it, while I sit around doing SFA...so who am I to bitch?

However I believe that any bloat, be it at the Foundation, or developers, development, or Apache is all part-and-parcel of the Kitchen Sink mentality of computing.

I was going to blame the Linux community's Kitchen Sink mentality, but then I remembered Microsoft and their products (and just about everybody else) and realised that it's a computing thing, not platform specific.

Ever asked somebody to do an install for you, either because you don't have time, or it's new to you, or whatever? They will always install every last little thing, "Because you may need it someday".

I'm a minimalist when it comes to systems, and I mean minimalist: unless the system won't function without something, it's not installed. Yet I have never met anybody else with the same approach.

Humans and bloat go together I guess.

Seriously, other than httpd

...I thought apache.org was primarily about Java projects.
I won't go into a troll about how challenging it was, trying to set up Tomcat to work with a database.
Poring over the source code, what I gathered was that they were using XML files and the admittedly interesting reflection features of the JVM to more or less script the JVM and quite a bit of the app server, especially the security stuff.
The documentation was less than illuminating, and the source code little help. So I took a failing grade in the software engineering class, quit school, and got on with life.
Anyway, a survey of apache.org would reveal an overwhelming Java bias in their projects, no?

Cherokee

I know this is sort of off-topic, but has anyone tried the Cherokee web server? I've heard some good things about it, but not enough to try it out yet. We were using apache 2, switched to lighttpd, and now we're back at apache 2 again (switched back because lighttpd wasn't handling heavy loads very well which could have just been mis-configuration I guess).

So...if you were to start an open source project

Where would you host it? Apache, Source Forge, or somewhere else?

How important do you think the Apache brand is to attracting new developers to your project?

There's a problem?

I'd think at least twice before criticizing Apache's basic structure. There aren't many open source projects that are as successful as Apache and dominate their space as thoroughly.

Roller Weblogger's Transition to Apache

I've been monitoring Roller's transition through Apache's incubator process. You can get a glimpse of all the legal licensing issues a project has to go through to become compliant. Definitely an interesting read:

http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator -roller-dev/200511.mbox/thread [apache.org]

mod_jk

They don't seem to apply their rigorous procedures to mod_jk, the plugin that JBoss.org has taken over development of. The quality of numerous releases over the past year has been very disappointing. The 1.2.15 release looks decent, but its predecessors were very buggy to the point of being what I'd consider beta software not ready for running in the enterprise environment.

Making Apache easy to install

One complaint I've often heard is how Apache is difficult to install for beginners. I came across a great answer to this question recently. Check out the Apache Friends XAMPP [apachefriends.org] package, which combines Apache, MySQL, PHP & PEAR, Perl, ProFTPD, phpMyAdmin, OpenSSL, GD, Freetype2, libjpeg, libpng, gdbm, zlib, expat, Sablotron, libxml, Ming, Webalizer, pdf class, ncurses, mod_perl, FreeTDS, gettext, mcrypt, mhash, eAccelerator, SQLite and IMAP C-Client.

It's very easy to install, and is set up to be easily administered. I now recommend it to users of my recently released DMO [sourceforge.net] software, which provides a kind of Object-based DB layer on top of MySQL.

Maybe other projects have it wrong?

I don't know, but I get tired of the endless half-baked FOSS projects out there.

For example, how many FOSS CMS projects are there? At least several dozen, maybe a few hundred. If half the effort went into about six CMS projects, those projects would be awsome.

When every FOSS developer decides to go his/her own way, you get an endless series of cr@p.

Fact is: Apache is way more successful than 99% of FOSS projects out there. So maybe everybody else is out of step?

ASF "overhead" is good for some environments

To get management to seriously consider Open Source, it's nice for them to be able to see some management processes in place. It's one of their concerns over Open Source - is it all just "wild and wooly" development, or is there a plan, is there change management, etcetera. So, to that end, this so-called "overhead" helps get Open Source adopted in places where PHBs have to be convinced.

I would like to take this opportunity...

...to pump LightTPD [lighttpd.net] as a lightweight and simpler web server solution alternative to Apache. LightTPD has a smaller memory footprint then Apache does as well. Apache processes had greater than 10% of my system memory used while running a personal web server. Running the same setup with lighttpd showed around 0.3% CPU used. Configuration is still a little confusing to the average newb, but IMHO setup was easier with LightTPD.

Re:Don't bet your business on OSS

"So, after several months of trying to dual-boot Linux (Ubuntu 5.10)"

Ubuntu 5.10 was relesed one month ago. I still think that was the closest to a true statement in that post.

Re:Well, it should read:

Off topic? It is not! This is part of the community, and I am suggesting (or complaing) about the color scheme.. which is.. er... part of the community.

Re:Don't bet your business on OSS

You are making your company dependent on the GOOD WILL of others.

Quite to the contrary: with OSS, you are not dependent on anybody.

The real thing you should worry about is that with closed source software, you are at the mercy of your vendor.

However it all functions perfectly under Windows and Mac OSX.

I'm typing this from a Mac OS X laptop--which I just had to reinstall because it was dying with a kernel panic during boot. Before that, it failed to read the xD cards from my new consumer digital camera. And among many problems, file associations are inconsistent under OS X, the green resize window button is unintuitive, and the Finder views switch haphazardly. The point is that even the best desktop operating systems have problems--Linux, OS X, and Windows are comparable in that respect. If you claim otherwise, you're simply trolling.

Re:Don't bet your business on OSS

Who is the wiseguy that uncommented this guy's mod_idiot line in his httpd.conf?

Re:Don't bet your business on OSS

>>So, after several months of trying to dual-boot Linux (Ubuntu 5.10)<<
I notice you list Ubuntu as one of the dual boot tryouts but not the other? I'm guessing XP because you mentioned it earlier in the post.... could be NT,98,ME,SE ??? Anyhow I think the problem arises from the nonstandard way microsoft grabs/tags partitions. Why don't you tyr using microsofts boot manager after all it should work excellent since it is from a trusted tried and true software manufacturer that you can trust your business with !!!