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Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 12:32:51 -0500 (CDT)
From: Milt Epstein <mepstein@uiuc.edu>
To: Tomcat Users List <tomcat-user@jakarta.apache.org>,
   Jacob Kjome <hoju@visi.com>
Subject: Re: Re[2]: MOD_JK Problem ?
In-Reply-To: <1332109523.20020624093914@visi.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.31.0206241124250.13035-100000@staff1.cso.uiuc.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On Mon, 24 Jun 2002, Jacob Kjome wrote:

[ ... ]
> As much as you and I would like the Apache developers to produce
> binary versions of the software they develop, it is not really their
> responsibility.  It is all of ours.  If you believe differently,
> then you misunderstand open source.  I'm not so familiar with how to
[ ... ]

FWIW (i.e. this discussion probably doesn't belong here), I don't
agree completely with this.  Yes, Apache is open source, and a
volunteer effort, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't expect them
to do some/all of these things.  It's simply a matter of where they
draw the line of what they will/won't do.  For example, using your
reasoning, they could just as easily only provide the source code,
without any makefiles or build tools or such, or even any
documentation at all.  But they do provide those.  Providing binaries
for the most popular platforms is just another step in making things
more convenient for users, in making a product that's that much easier
to get started with.  And this should be relatively easy to do,
because I assume they're building things regularly (so they can test
them) for some of these platforms.

This is especially true for Tomcat and Tomcat-related software,
because it is the reference implementation of the servlet spec.  (Of
course, that also suggests that Sun should provide some support, and
in fact, they do, although I don't know how much.)

Another FWIW, I too have to admit a lot of frustration with the state
of the tomcat connectors, especially documentation, and problems
building it.  I was able to get Tomcat integrated with Apache up on
one site in less than half an hour -- but that was mostly because it
was Solaris and I was able to grab a binary of the connector.  Now I
need to do it for AIX, and I need to build the connector myself, and
it's been quite a hassle.  (I also didn't care too much about which
connector it was on the Solaris machine, because it was just a test
site; the AIX one is production, and I need to know which connector I
should go with.)

Milt Epstein
Research Programmer
Systems and Technology Services (STS)
Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
mepstein@uiuc.edu


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