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On Tue, 29 Dec 2009, Jonathan Rochkind wrote: > I think you may find yourself somewhat in the minority in thinking Apache is > bad software. (I certainly have my complaints about it, but in general I find > it more robust, flexible, and bug-free than just about any other software I > work with). > > But aside from getting into a war about some particular package: It may be > true that in general popular software does not necessarily equal good > software -- even popular open source software. And doesn't neccesarily equal > the right software solution for your problem. (I could mention some > library-sector-origin open source software I think proves that, but I won't, > and it would just be my opinion anyways, like yours of Apache). > > But popular software _does_ mean software that has a much higher chance of > continuing to evolve with the times instead of stagnating, getting it's bugs > and security flaws fixed in a timely manner, and having a much larger base of > question-answering and support available for it (both free and paid). > > Which is one important criteria for evaluating open source software. But > nobody was suggesting it should be the _only_ criteria used for evaluating > open source software, or even neccesarily the most important. It depends on > your situation. I think that part of the problem here is that software tends to fill a niche, and some of these larger software projects tend to fill the 'enterprise' niche. Now, Apache 2 in many ways *is* easier to configure than Apache 1.3, but the sheer number of configuration options from all of the different modules makes it more difficult to configure than the Netscape/iPlanet/ SunOne product line. (at least to me, other people might not be making the sorts of changes that I deal with). However, there's a lot of power in Apache's configuration ability ... I just wish I didn't have to deal with all of it.* ... but it's like anything -- if I switch to a different server, it might be easier to configure, but then I lose mod_perl support, so it's a trade-off. -Joe * I think I lost a week trying to get some software virtual hosts working correctly, where there'd be a 'default' host, and one that only responded to specific names and had some alternate security options.