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Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:30:54 -0800
From: Chris Darroch <chrisd@pearsoncmg.com>
Organization: Pearson CMG/CTG
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Subject: mod_fcgid incubation?
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Hi --

   As Paul Querna noted recently, some folks are using mod_fcgid
these days instead of mod_fastcgi, in part because it was (I believe)
the first of the two to work with httpd 2.2.  Unfortunately, the
original developer of mod_fcgid, Pan Qingfeng, has largely moved on
to other things.

   He and I have been in touch lately about long-term maintenance
of mod_fcgid.  (We've helped by a colleague of mine who can translate
fluently between Chinese and English, although Pan Qingfeng's English
is quite good as well.)  In a pinch, I've offered to help get releases
out and review some of the queued-up patches contributed by various folks.

   I also asked, though, whether he'd be interested in contributing
mod_fcgid to the ASF as, perhaps, a sub-project of httpd, and received
a very positive reply:

> 很高兴认识你们。我开发这个模块的目的也是想尽可能多的人可以用上它，所以
> 把它交给ASF完全没有问题（实际上我也很希望可以交给ASF)，过程中有任何问题我都
> 可以帮忙的。

which my colleague translates as follows:

> I am very glad to know you guys. I did this module and hoped more
> people could use it.  There is no problem at all for me to donating
> the module to ASF (actually, I am glad to do so).  If there is anything
> I can do to help, please feel free to let me know.


   So, I said I'd raise the question on the httpd dev list.  Since
I'm a neophyte to such things, and also not a lawyer, I assume this
would need to be voted on somehow, and then (if accepted) moved into
the incubation stage until legal issues were resolved.

   One key question I have (jumping ahead a little) is whether
everyone who has contributed a patch to the project needs to contacted
and a signed contributor agreement recovered from them.  If not, then I
would think that we'd just need a CLA from Pan Qingfeng to proceed
(and perhaps, in that case, we could skip the incubator stage, as
Apache ZooKeeper recently did).

   If we do need CLAs from all patch contributors, that might take
more time.  Fortunately, there's a good change log for the project
with names and email addresses; it includes some of the usual suspects
(like Paul Querna and myself) but also a number of other folks we'd need
to track down.


   I know there's mod_proxy_fcgi in httpd already, but among other
things, it only handles the FCGI_RESPONDER role.  It might be very nice
to be able to provide the FCGI_AUTHORIZER functionality as well either
via a separate module based on mod_fcgid, or through code merged into
mod_proxy_fcgi from that project.  (The FCGI_FITLER role seems to be
unsupported in both mod_fcgid and mod_fastcgi; looks like that's a job
for the future, one way or another.)

   At any rate, if people wouldn't mind chewing this over for a bit,
I'd really appreciate it.  The project is available from SourceForge
under the GPL version 2.0.  (Unfortunately, the actual code files are
largely missing the legal headers, but the intent is clear; I'm sure
this is an oversight due to [human] language barriers.)

   See the following for info, code, and my own pending patches:

http://fastcgi.coremail.cn/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mod-fcgid

http://people.apache.org/~chrisd/patches/mod_fcgid/


   Thanks very much in advance for any advice people can offer,

Chris.

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