Apache May Stop 1.3, 2.0 Series Releases 77
Dan Jones writes "The Apache Software Foundation may stop releasing new versions of the older 1.3 and 2.0 series of its flagship Web server product with most development now focused on the 2.2 series. Nothing is final yet, but messages to the Apache httpd developer mailing list recommend the formal deprecation of the 1.3.x branch, with most citing a lack of development activity. The Apache HTTP server project is one of the most successful and popular open source projects and has become an integral part of the technology stack for thousands of Web and SaaS applications. The first generation of Apache was released in 1995, and the 2.0 series began in 2002. Apache httpd 2.2 began in 2005, with the latest release (October 2009) being 2.2.14. However, the most recent releases of the 1.3 and 2.0 series servers were back in January 2008. With the combined total of active 1.3 and 2.0 series Apache Web servers well into the millions, any decision to end-of-life either product will be watched closely."
go for it (Score:3, Insightful)
these people don't care if they're in active development - and almost all of them are running them because upgrading isn't worth it for their application.
all these people care about are security patches. as long as that keeps happening, depreciate them all you want
it's just like people running 2.2.x kernels on high uptime servers. they don't want new features - if they were willing to install a new version of something every time a new feature came out, they'd be running 2.6.x now anyway. but they'll keep using it as long as reliability and security fixes keep rolling out.
Re:Netcraft confirms... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bizarrely enough, this is actually something netcraft might confirm.
You can not kill FOSS! (Score:3, Insightful)
All kidding aside anybody with the skills and resources can now take over 1.3 and keep updating it. You can not really EOL a FOSS program if anybody wants to keep it alive. That being said there are other light weight web servers that can do what people are using 1.3 for. Now Apache 2.0 may be a bit harder to replace since the migration isn't automatic from what I hear.
About time (Score:3, Insightful)
Supporting Apache 1.3 is like Microsoft supporting Windows 98. Apache 1.x is almost 15 years and Apache 2.x has been out for 10 years. People have had plenty of time to upgrade. It's time to move on.
Re:Surly this is just a formality (Score:5, Insightful)
With open source, the product doesn't need to die. If ASF isn't going to put any more resources into it, but other people are still using it, then the code is out there and they can hire someone to work on it. There are lots of developers familiar with the Apache codebase who, I'm sure, would be happy for someone to pay them to back-port fixes to the 1.3 and 2.0 series.
It's also worth noting that this has, in fact, already happened. The OpenBSD base systems includes a fork of Apache 1.3.29 and will probably continue to do so for a long time, because Apache 2.x has a new license.
Re:Surly this is just a formality (Score:5, Insightful)
If a company that supports a closed-source product wants to end support, their customers can always pay them to continue support for the product somewhat longer
Their customers can always offer to pay them to continue support. The company may accept, or it may decide that discontinuing the product and expecting the customers to upgrade is more profitable.
Re:I would like to see 1.3 stay (Score:3, Insightful)
Although 1.3 certainly has a smaller memory footprint without some features I don't need, I usually try to get the best from both worlds. For my applications, I normally use the latest apache, and leverage its memory usage by using any of the following:
Not all of them are required in every application, but if it starts to grow, staying with just apache isn't normally a good solution.
Re:Fully backwards compatible, or dead end. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no way I can subscribe to the notion that Apache developers (or anyone, really) has an ethical obligation to keep maintaining a 10 year old codebase with any kind of implied guarantee. If there was a contract in place requiring that, then sure; but there isn't such a thing here.
Any people using Apache 1.3 should have really see this coming, and there's absolutely no excuse not to. It's the standard way of doing things in this industry, and if anything, the term was already waaay longer than is common.
Furthermore, the options are also fairly obvious:
1. Upgrade your environment to 2.2 (or pay someone to do so for you and accept responsibility).
2. Keep maintaining 1.3 on your own (or pay someone to do so for you and accept responsibility).
3. Migrate to a different server (or pay... you get the idea).
Now you also say that:
they dont have the funds or possibility to upgrade by themselves
to which I can only reply, "too bad, they should have engaged their brains at some point in the past - they had 10 years to do so". If they're screwed, they have absolutely no-one to blame by themselves.
Of course, in reality, when they realize that the FOSS white knight in shining armor won't save their ass by keeping to provide them quality software for free this time, you can bet the funds will suddenly be found. Furthermore, I suspect that vast majority of those people would actually go with option #1, and just upgrade to 2.2 (and also learn their lesson to keep up with the update curve to a reasonable extent to minimize "late upgrade" expenses).
Or maybe, if there are really that many 1.3 users who absolutely won't move to 2.2, and each one has so little money they can't pay anyone to get them to move to anything else, either (where are they hosting? in the basement?), then, well, the beauty of FOSS is that they can also come together, form some sort of non-profit funded by all of them - with minimal amount of contribution from each - that would hire people to fork and maintain 1.3 for the benefit of all.
Or maybe they can just donate to OpenBSD.
In any case, if people "don't have the means or resources" (which ultimately means "money") to do their business, then they shouldn't stay in that business - it really is as simple as that.