Dave Winer doesn’t understand Apache at all: My theory about this is that they were fat and happy and blissfully unaware of what the competition was up to.
Um, no. To quote from the “Why Apache Is Free” section of the “About Apache” page (emphasis mine):
Apache exists to provide a robust and commercial-grade reference implementation of the HTTP protocol. It must remain a platform upon which individuals and institutions can build reliable systems, both for experimental purposes and for mission-critical purposes. We believe the tools of online publishing should be in the hands of everyone, and software companies should make their money providing value-added services such as specialized modules and support, amongst other things. We realize that it is often seen as an economic advantage for one company to “own” a market - in the software industry that means to control tightly a particular conduit such that all others must pay. This is typically done by “owning” the protocols through which companies conduct business, at the expense of all those other companies. To the extent that the protocols of the World Wide Web remain “unowned” by a single company, the Web will remain a level playing field for companies large and small. Thus, “ownership” of the protocol must be prevented, and the existence of a robust reference implementation of the protocol, available absolutely for free to all companies, is a tremendously good thing.
It’s ironic that Dave would think that Apache is out to get him, to drive him into the ground by undercutting him on price. Apache is out to help him. Really. They come in peace. Forget the bluster of the dot-com boom; forget chatterboxes like Brian Behlendorf. Apache is specifically designed for Userland: a small, independent company that makes their money providing specialized services built on top of open protocols. They don’t want to compete with you, Dave; they want to help you compete with others.
Furthermore, if Apache didn’t exist, Dave and everyone like him would currently — right now, as we happily frolick and lol and gag around on a Sunday afternoon — be paying outrageous licensing fees to Microsoft for the privilege of implementing their proprietary, patented extension of the HTTP protocol in servers like Frontier. This was Microsoft’s plan from the beginning:
That this didn’t happen is directly attributable to the Apache project’s dedication to openness, and their BSD-style licensing that allows closed-source companies to build on top of their work. No, Userland shouldn’t rewrite Frontier from scratch now just to be an Apache module; they have an established code base that works. But you could at least acknowledge your debt to them graciously instead of insulting them.
iPodHacks: Wax Your ‘Pod [via BoingBoing] My girlfriend wants to do this. Or maybe an iPod bra.
iPoding: What’s Your iPod’s Name? Rover.
Thomas Henry: The Brachiopod Antiquatonia Coloradoensis (Girty) from the Upper Morrowan and Atokan (Lower Middle Pennsylvanian) of the United States (U.S. Geologica… [via AmazonScan] Currently the lowest-ranking book on Amazon, with a sales rank of 2,270,279. Currently out of print, but amazingly, there’s some poor lost soul out there breathlessly waiting to buy it from you via Amazon Auctions, if for some inexplicable reason you have a copy and for some equally inexplicable reason you suddenly decide that your life would still be complete without it. (This, incidentally, is why I’m scared to become a professional author. Encouraging emails, access logs, and linkbacks are nice and all that, but sales rankings are cold, hard, and unforgiving.)
Josh Groban: Josh Groban. Currently the highest-ranking CD on Amazon. Just shoot me. Just fucking shoot me. I’d rather eat my socks. I’d rather eat snails. I’d rather eat (gasp) tofu. I’d rather read about Lower Middle Pennsylvanian germs. (In case the name doesn’t ring a bell, he’s the high school kid that Ally went to the prom with in last season’s finale of “Ally McBeal”, because Robert Downey Jr. has, um, issues, and had to be written out of the script at the last minute.) Josh, I sayeth unto you: you are in your 14th minute of fame. There will not be a second album. There will not be a movie career. There will not be slobbering fans. It will all fade, and quickly, so quickly it will give you vertigo, give you nightmares, give you the bends so badly that you’ll vomit on the way down but you’ll be accelerating downward so fast that you’ll pass it in midair and it won’t land on you until the 16th minute. You have been warned.
I’ve given up on work for the rest of the weekend, and am turning to Python for consolation and sanity. Specifically, writing a few more sections of my book. Of course, the section I’m working on now is an attempt to explain, in one page or less, unicode to the uninitiated. Heh. Unicode offers neither sanity nor consolation, although Python’s implementation of it is quite elegant. Here’s what I have so far:
Python has had unicode support throughout the language since version 2.0.
Footnote: Actually, Python has had unicode support since version 1.6, but version 1.6 was a contractual obligation release that nobody likes to talk about, a bastard stepchild of a hippie youth best left forgotten. Even the official Python documentation claims that unicode was “new in version 2.0″. It’s a lie, but, like the lies of presidents who say they inhaled but didn’t enjoy it, we choose to believe it because we remember our own misspent youths a bit too vividly.
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