Just over 10 years ago Brian was graduate student at Berkeley and worked as tech support monkey. He had lot of time and used that for exploring the roots of Internet. He had FTP account and e-mail addres. He ran a Gopher server and heard of a new protocol HTTP and signed to IETF mail list.
First of the non academic websites was Wired magazine website done by Brian. "A lot of people were happy that the site had pink text over purple background and black text over grey background."
Software company might provide a software that could meet 80 percent of our needs but 20 percent were not met. Apache was a fork of the NCSA server that was distributed with open source license. 1998 60 percent of the web was runnign Apache. This created even more interest for the software development.
The decision to use non free software foundation license
We like simple license. We felt that this would leed to biggest developer base that could participate to the development.
How would we feel if a company would implement our product to their product? Most of the people were pretty happy about it. It related to our work in IETF. We were affraid that a company would own a browser and server and could eventually control Internet. The best way to avoid this would be to have open protocoll (HTTP) and a server that would faithfully implement the protocoll. "Having Microsoft to implement our server to their product would have been a mark of success. We were happy creating websites."
Bases of collaboration
Not a collaboration of the companies. Not a vote per dollar. Companies can have power if they join the mailing lists and contribute good code. "It doesnt matter if there is a company who has invested 500.000$ in developer time."
The ownership of IP was moved to ASF that was started as a buffer against individual liabily for infringement. Ownership isn't transferred but the ASF gets a right to license the rights.
1100 developers have a right to make changes to the code them selves. Apache has no paid staff. Companies come to apache and tell that they need some features that nobody else would develop to the apache. They want to influence the direction that the most popular server of Internet is going.
Decision making
Every one gets a vote and a decision is made if a change gets three votes and no vetos. The person who makes a veto has to explain why the change should not be accepted.
Linux is a flight control model. Linus Torvalds sits in the middle receiving patches and making a decision what gets accepted to the kernel. He has leutenants to help him. Anyone not happy with the decisions made by Linus can make a fork of the kernel.
Apache had to cancel one of their projects because the environment was hostile to new developers. "Developer motivation is one of the most scarce resource to open source projects."
Can the success of Apache be duplicated?
Apache worked because it was not under one corporation. Having devopers to feel that they are part of tribe is good for motivation. Brians company collab.net is helping their clients to build communities around their projects.
Brian's advice for companies using open source production methods: Open source projects work the best if you don't make any promises to clients. Don't be hostile to commercial projects. Make it possible for people to make money out of the open source software.
Hackers create software for hackers?
I dont think that in future hackers will suddently create user friendly software. There is a place for companies that can do that.
Joe Hall: Samuelson clinic together with sims will launch soon a webservice that allows developers to decide what license to choose.
Hostility of open source community agains closed source companies?
Internet is a great soap box. The people who have the most extreme opinnions usually get their voices heard. People like Stalmann is known to be sometimes rude to people. He has made a religion out of free software ideology. Brian said he is more in favor of having a balance.
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