

Today is the 15th Anniversary of the Apache HTTP Server - 0xdeadc0de
http://blogs.apache.org/foundation/entry/the_apache_software_foundation_announces2

======
spudlyo
I remember in the late 90s being excited to root for Apache every month when
the new Netcraft survey would come out and show Apache's continued dominance
over IIS and other rivals. I remember the FUD around Apache, and having to
explain to people that I worked with that "a patchy" server was one that was
being actively worked on and improved, and that wasn't a bad thing. I'm happy
that Apache and Linux ended up being accepted and widely used -- for a while I
had real fears of a dystopian future where the world ran on an IIS/Windows
platform. Happy birthday Apache, I'm glad you made it.

~~~
superchink
Not to downplay the value of this comment—it truly is a victory for open
source software—but I first read it as:

    
    
      I remember in the late 90s being excited to root Apache every month...

~~~
danudey
Perhaps you were thinking of wu-ftpd?

------
leftnode
This is pretty awesome that a project started 15 years ago is still one of the
most popular pieces of software used today.

Hats off to the Apache Software Foundation for such a great job.

~~~
ThinkWriteMute
That depends on your view. I'd much rather something more modern (YAWS, Ngix,
Mongrel) be the most popular.

~~~
yesimahuman
Here is some good insight into why Apache is better for a lot of
implementations: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/195534/in-production-
apac...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/195534/in-production-apache-
modwsgi-or-nginx-modwsgi)

~~~
paraschopra
Oh, I am not sure I understand it deeply but is it just applicable to mod_wsgi
or does FastCGI or PHP-FPM suffer from a similar behavior?

(Apologies if the question is naive or dumb)

~~~
chrischen
Don't know about that specific problem, but mod_php is faster than php-fpm or
fastcgi: [http://blog.a2o.si/2009/06/24/apache-mod_php-compared-to-
ngi...](http://blog.a2o.si/2009/06/24/apache-mod_php-compared-to-nginx-php-
fpm/)

------
chuhnk
Apache, truly a great web server and still truly underestimated. People
immediately switch to things like lighttpd or nginx when they start to feel
perfomance issues coming on. Yet Apache gives you many different mpm's to
choose from, worker being one of the greats (a hybrid multi process multi
threaded server), or even the evented mpm which is much faster. Its all about
knowing how to tune it.

Love you apache.

------
shabda
So long, and thanks for all the HTTP responses. (I prefer nginx now. :) )

[Edited, per below]

~~~
jrockway
This makes me think of phishing websites hosted with Apache.

------
thechangelog
I had no idea that the +1 commenting style originated from the Apache mailing
list. Evidently it did, in 1994.

+1 to the entire ASF.

------
Kilimanjaro
Apache and Nginx, same as Firefox and Chrome.

Nobody saw the train coming.

~~~
davidw
Actually, anyone who has been in this industry for more than a few years knows
that Apache has always had event-based 'competition'.

When I was at Linuxcare, I had the static assets moved over to a different
server with Boa, since the main Apache server had a massive mod_perl memory
footprint. It speeded things up and freed up a lot of memory. And this was 10
years ago...

The Apache advantage has always been that it did (a lot) more than just spit
out static files quickly. Perhaps nginx or something else will take its place,
but it certainly won't be merely a question of event-based servers being
faster with static files. We've known that for many years.

~~~
munctional
I use nginx because it consumes a fraction of the resources that Apache does
(even when doing nothing but serve static files).

~~~
gjm11
"Even" or "especially"? I'm very inexpert on this stuff, but I thought the
folklore was that Apache is appropriate when you need its configurability or
when most of the time spent servicing each request is spent doing real work
rather than web-server overhead, and that you want things like
nginx/lighttpd/... for cases when you're serving mostly static files and care
about pushing them out as fast as possible. Am I way out of date?

------
mronge
I wonder what the founding Apache members are up to now?

------
ahi
Last year I wrote a paper on the history of Apache for a grad course. Frankly,
it's not very good, but I was able to track down some decent sources and old
quotes from the original list. <http://adhocidiocy.com/JSteverman_Apache.pdf>
<\---PDF

------
lmz
I wonder if httpd's Event MPM can be good enough to compete with the current
crop of servers e.g. lighttpd / nginx.

~~~
chuhnk
I benched it about a year ago and it was quite impressive, but I know there
have been developments since there. I may do it again and post results.

------
marshallp
The industry used apache a lot and it deserves kudos, but it was a poorly
architected from software from the start. Aolserver was a much better server
as is erlang yaws.

~~~
pquerna
Actually, I would contend that the pre-forking architecture WAS the correct
architecture for first 10 years.

Remember how much PHP crashes?

~~~
wmf
It's a little amazing that we're still having threads vs. events debates 15
years on. I guess I'll have to wait a few more years for someone to invent an
event-driven fast path (that loads no plugins for reliability) fronting a
preforked pool of worker processes.

~~~
pquerna
hacking on it in httpd trunk man, just working for this startup called
cloudkick keeps distracting me from the real priorities in life :-)

