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Announcements Software Apache

Eight Years Of Apache 44

Posted by timothy from the that's-a-lot-of-hits dept.
Kyle Hamilton writes "The Apache Software Foundation today announced that its HTTP Server platform has reached a milestone of eight consecutive years of World Wide Web technology leadership. Since its first release in April of 1995, the Apache HTTP Server has become as pervasive as the Web itself. According to two separate and independent surveys, the Apache HTTP Server, which originally established itself as the leading web server technology in April 1996, continues to acquire even greater market, growing faster than all other competing web server technologies. Achieving eight straight years of technology leadership confirms that the open source model works. Apache is now successfully deployed in a diverse set of environments, from large commercial entities to small nonprofit organizations. We are grateful to the community for their continued support and participation in the development process, said Sander Striker, Vice President of the Apache HTTP Server Project. We are firmly committed to continuing to provide the most accessible and standards-compliant Web server platform in existence."
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Eight Years Of Apache More

Eight Years Of Apache

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  • Milestone (Score:4, Funny)

    by Meiyo Neko ( 567270 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @10:33PM (#9123804) Homepage
    Congrats! Here's to another 010!

  • Hip-hip Hoorah (Score:5, Insightful)

    by agent dero ( 680753 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @10:47PM (#9123849) Homepage
    The Apache HTTP project is a great project at that, but let's not forget apache's other AWESOME projects, Ant, jakarta, XML, PHP.
    The List [apache.org]

    Thanks to the success of the HTTP project, we've gained these, sounds like we should 'pay' tribute: http://www.apache.org/foundation/contributing.html [apache.org]

  • Isn't it more like 11 years? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Meowing ( 241289 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2004 @11:26PM (#9123996) Homepage
    I always thought of Apache as a continuation of NCSA httpd. Wasn't that more like 1993?

  • quick - kill it! kill it! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm one of many who has dropped Apache in favor of thttpd [acme.com].

    So the next time you're setting up a webserver and Apache is being a pain in the ass - kill it and switch to thttpd. You'll thank me.

    • Re:quick - kill it! kill it! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wirelessbuzzers ( 552513 ) on Wednesday May 12, 2004 @12:22AM (#9124177)
      I'm one of many who has dropped Apache in favor of thttpd.

      So the next time you're setting up a webserver and Apache is being a pain in the ass - kill it and switch to thttpd. You'll thank me.

      Well, thttpd is certainly faster and probably easier for images and other static files, but it is also certainly not faster for PHP and many other dynamic types. It also doesn't support SSL, which is a must in many cases.

    • Re:quick - kill it! kill it! (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      thttpd is for niche applications. Take the Drudge Report for example -- all static HTML files, yet TONS and TONS of traffic. You need something that will dump the text out there, with little overhead.

      thttpd would make a great "images.whatever.com" server. :)

    • Re:quick - kill it! kill it! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Edgewize ( 262271 ) on Wednesday May 12, 2004 @04:38AM (#9124910)
      A word of caution: thttpd is not the brilliant solution that a lot of people think that it is. The best features of thttpd are its low CPU and memory footprints, and its simplicity for virtual hosting. But those are pretty much its only features.

      For sites without too many dependencies per page (javascript, images), it's great. But for most people, there's a huge shortcoming: it does not support persistant (Keep-Alive) connections. Every file request has to wait for a new TCP connection to be established. When your average ping time is 250+ ms, that hurts BAD. Broadband users don't notice so much but modem users get shafted.

      Also, thttpd has serious issues if your total fileset exceeds 1GB. It keeps a cache of last-used files via mmap(), but if you exceed your VM address space (lets say, a couple dozen 200 MB videos), you're in a world of hurt.

      There are commercial versions like Premium THTTPD [schumann.cx] that cure many of these shortcomings, and include a host of other features like FastCGI for running PHP, etc.

      But in the realm of free software, there is no one-size-fits-all best server. Apache isn't THAT hard to configure, and it beats thttpd in a lot of important areas.
    • The comparison chart on their website -> Last updated 12jul98. It'll take a little more than a 6 year old chart to convince me it's a superior webserver
    • But does it serve gopher [slashdot.org]?

  • Celebrate with a new version (Score:5, Informative)

    by h3 ( 27424 ) on Wednesday May 12, 2004 @02:37AM (#9124572) Homepage Journal
    Seems like 1.3.31 was officially released today (11 May) after last week's premature 'announcement' here [slashdot.org].

    Here's the official announcement/changelog [apache.org].

    A new version of modssl to go with it too- just in time for the new server I had to set up today :).

    -h3

    • CAN-2003-0987 (cve.mitre.org)
      In mod_digest, verify whether the nonce returned in the client response is one we issued ourselves. This problem does not affect mod_auth_digest.


      clearly/hopefully the term nonce was not coined by a british developer...

  • 8 years of redundancy (Score:2, Interesting)

    by billcopc ( 196330 )
    Apache rocks the shiznit all right, but to me this means 8 years of being forked halfway-to-hell because the core Apache group is so adamant about dismissing user-submitted patches. Don't get me wrong, I love Apache. I just hate having to custom-tweak it to get it working in a logical way (for me). Stuff like easily-refreshed configs for hosting providers, and non-broken child spawning logic (because I'm still on 1.3x), and a few other ridiculous nags that have been ignored for the sake of "purity".

    This
    • What does easily-refreshed configs for hosting? I always just use apachectl graceful.
      • I guess one could work out a system with #included files and apachectl dancing. I'm just used to changing things in real-time on other servers and seeing the result immediately. Some form of connection monitoring would also be nice (e.g. to see what work is being done on socket X). Logs will tell you what happened, but a live peek inside the brain will let you target that one mofo that keeps chugging all your bandwidth and/or runs a truckload of exploit tests.

    • Re:8 years of redundancy (Score:4, Informative)

      by dirkx ( 540136 ) <dirkx@vangulik.org> on Thursday May 13, 2004 @07:02AM (#9137823) Homepage
      Apache group is so adamant about dismissing user-submitted patches

      I'd hate to dispell the lore - but the web server is in fact largely build from quality checked and polished versions of those submitted patches. Sure - a patch which fixes 1 thing and breaks 3 others; or optimizes for one rare case at the expense for 2 common cases may need some work - but over those 8 years very few patches and suggestions have gone to waste. If they where good they typically pop up at some point later if they where too radical at the time of first posting.

      Soo keep them coming !

      Dw.

  • As a converted-from-IIS Apache fan, all I can say is keep up the good work virtually changing the *engine* internet works on.

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