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C O L U M N
COLLABORATIVE WORK COLLABORATIVE WORK
Roy T. Fielding University of California at Irvine [email protected] Gail Kaiser Columbia University [email protected]
THE APACHE HTTP SERVER PROJECT
Most reports of Internet collaboration refer to small-scale operations among a few authors or designers. However, several projects have shown that the Internet can also be the locus for large-scale collaboration.
In these projects, contributors from around the world combine their individual forces and develop a product that rivals those of multibillion dollar corporations.
The Apache HTTP Server Project* is a case in point. This collaborative software development effort has created a robust, feature-rich HTTP server software package that currently dominates the public Internet market (46 percent compared with 16 percent for Microsoft and 12 percent for Netscape, according to a June 1997 survey* published by Netcraft). The software and its source code are free, but Apaches popularity is more often attributed to performance than price.
The project is managed by the Apache Group, a geographically distributed group of volunteers who use the Internet and Web to communicate, develop, and distribute the server and its related documentation. In addition, hundreds of users have contributed ideas, code, and documentation to the project.
ORIGINS OF THE PROJECT
Prior to Apache, the most popular server software on the Web was the public domain HTTP daemon (httpd), developed by Rob McCool at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications,* University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. However, after McCool left NCSA in mid-1994 to work for Netscape, development of NCSA httpd stalled, and many Webmasters began to develop their own extensions and bug fixes.
In February 1995 a small group of these Webmasters gathered together via the Internet to coordinate their changes and produce a common distribution. A mailing list, shared information space (FTP- and HTTP-served directories), and logins for the core developers were created on a machine in Californias San Francisco Bay area,
with bandwidth and disk space donated by HotWired* and Organic Online.*
Less than a year after its first release, the Apache server surpassed NCSAs httpd as the leading server on the Internet. By June 1997, the Netcraft survey reported more than a half million Web sites using Apache and its derivatives.
PROCESS CONTEXT
Choosing appropriate methods and...