Quality of code in Apache Friedman quotes on Apache and IBM

See separate thread, "Why Windows is Less Secure than Linux," and

Here I cite from Thomas Friedman's recent book, The World is Flat, concerning the Apache collaboration with IBM. Everything between the lines is quoted (pp. 87 and following).

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By February 1999, they had completely rewritten the original NCSA program and formalized thier cooperation under the name "Apache"...

But how does it open source collaboration actually work? ...

"Most software development involves a source code repository and is managed by tools such as the Concurrent Versions System," he Behlendorf explained. "So there is a CVS server out there, and I have a CVS program on my computer. It allows me to connect to the server and pull down a copy of the code, so I can start working with it and making modifications... If I have the right privileges which is restricted to a tightly controlled oversight board, I can then take my patch and commit it to a repository and it will become part of the source code..."

So how does this community decide who are the trusted members?

"For Apache," said Behlendorf, "we started with eight people who really trusted each other, and as new people showed up at the discussion forum and offered patch files posted to the discussion forum, we would gain trust in others, and that eight grew to over one thousand. We were the first open source project to get attention from the business community and get the backing of IBM."

...IBM was trying to sell its own proprietary Web server, called GO, but it gained only a tiny sliver of the market. Apache proved to be both a better technology and free. So IBM eventually decided that if it could not beat Apache, it should join Apache.

IBM "initiated contact with me, as I had a somewhat public speaker role for Apache," said Behlendorf...

John Swainson was the senior IBM executive who led the team that approached Apache (he's now chairman of Computer buttociates). He picked up the story: "There was a whole debate going on at the time about open-source, but it was all over the place. We decided we could deal with the Apache guys because they answered our questions. We could hold a meaningful conversation with these guys, and we were able to create the nonprofit Apache Software Foundation and work out all the issues."

At IBM's expense, its lawyers worked with the Apache group to create a legal framework around it so that there would be no copyright or liability problems for companies, like IBM, that wanted to build applications on top of Apache and charge money for them. IBM saw the value of having a standard vanilla Web server architecture...that was constantly being improved by an open-source community...

"Today anybody can download the Apache code said Swainson. The only obligation is that they acknowledge that it came from the site, and if they make any changes that they share them back." There is an Apache development process that manages the traffic, and you earn your way into that process, added Swainson. It is something like a pure meritocracy. When IBM started using Apache, it became part of the community and started making contributions.

Indeed, the one thing the Apache people demanded in return for their collaboration with IBM was that IBM buttign its best engineers to join the apache open-source group and contribute, like everyone else, for free. "The Apache people were not interested in payment of cash," said Swainson. "They wanted *contribution* to the base. Our engineers came to us and said, 'These guys who do Apache are good and they are insisting that we contribute good people.' At first they rejected some of what we contributed. They said it wasn't up to their standards! The compensation that the community expected was our best contribution."

Today Apache is one of the most successful open-source tools...At the time, selling a product built on top of an open-source program was a risky move on IBM's part. To its credit, IBM was confident in its ability to keep producing differentiated software applications on top of the Apache vanilla. This model has since been widely adopted, after everyone saw how it propelled IBM's Web server business to commercial leadership in that category of software, generating huge amounts of revenue.

As I will repeat often in this book: There is no future in vanilla for most companies in a flat world.

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