Happy Birthday Apache HTTP Server

Posted on by Rich Sharples

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Apparently it was Apache Web Server’s 15th birthday yesterday – congratulations to anyone who’s ever been involved in the project. I doubt any would have thought that 15 years on, Apache would have become the dominant Web Server on the Web and the foundation of one of the most successful and recognized Open Source forges. For a history of the Apache Web Server and the Apache Software Foundation, head over to the ASF Blog.

Red Hat has been a supporter of Apache Web Server for a long time and has shipped and supported a version in its Red Hat Enterprise Linux for as long as I’ve been noodling with it. Last year we started shipping a standalone, multi-platform distribution as well – JBoss Enterprise Web Server. Earlier today we released the latest version of it and expanded our support for Apache HTTP Server to 14 different Operating System / architecture combinations. The exact component versions are listed here and there’s more information in the Release Notes. If you’re deploying Apache HTTP or Tomcat at scale – Red Hat also supports management of Apache HTTP Server and Tomcat alongside all JBoss products via JBoss Operations Network.

Running Part 4

Posted on by Rich Sharples

Here’s part 4 of my running log – my 10 week journey to train for a half marathon – something I haven’t attempted for over a decade. The log is mostly for my own reference but if you’re interested you can read Part 1 ,  2 and 3 as well.

Well the running is going pretty well – I’m starting week 8 with a rest day after a long run yesterday (on the American Tobacco Trail) – I was scheduled to do 11 miles, aiming to do 12 and ended up doing 13.68. This made up for the previous week which was a complete wash-out in terms of mileage due to travel and picking up a nasty bug between Boston and Raleigh.

I have 2 more weeks and weather permitting should be able to get 2 more long runs in before I start tapering down before the run on March 21st – I’d like to diverge from my schedule and see if I can do 16-18 miles – if I can, then I’m going to sign up for the City of Oaks full marathon in November.

One last thing – if you run in the Cary / Raleigh area and haven’t already – make your next run the American Tobacco Trail – it’s mostly flat; it’s a nice even surface, great scenery and shaded from the sun – there are also mile markers to keep you motivated. It’s pretty much the perfect place to run IMO.


JBoss AS 6.0 Milestone 2 released

Posted on by Rich Sharples

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The JBoss AS team moved to a more rapid and incremental release cycle with the 6.x family and the second milestone was released today (release notes, download, repo.). The release was lead by Brian Stansberry and new features include :

  • Servlet 3.0 / JBoss Web 3.0
  • JPA 2.0 / Hibernate 3.5
  • JAX-RS 1.0 / RESTEasy 2.0
  • Microcontainer 2.2

More detail in blogs from Ales, Brian, Steve and Rémy. Congratulations to Brian on another on-time release and good luck to Jason and team for the next milestone release in a couple of months time.

Running Part 3

Posted on by Rich Sharples

Here’s part 3 of my running log – my 10 week journey to train for a half marathon – something I haven’t attempted for over a decade. The log is mostly for my own reference but if you’re interested you can read Part 1 and  Part 2 as well.

Yesterday I completed my fourth full week of training. It’s going pretty well – I’m still slightly ahead of plan in terms of distance and with yesterday’s 7-miler I made some good progress on pace as well. I’ve mostly been running on the hamster wheel in the gym due to cold weather and travel – but that has allowed me to get a better sense of my pace. Over the next 5 weeks I start to up the mileage and hopefully I can increase my speed sufficiently to maintain a constant time-investment as time is something I don’t have a surplus of. Yet again, I’ll be working my running schedule around my travel this week so will have to cram a lot of miles in at the weekend. I’ve also notice that I’m losing about 1lb a week – that cumulative advantage should help as I start on the longer runs.

Immortality of Code / Life beyond Snoracle

Posted on by Rich Sharples

One of the benefits we talk about with Open Source is that the license and collaborative nature can offer some protection for users should the main supporter disappear. Rarely has this been put to test but here’s an example that came across in my feeds today. OpenSSO was a Sun project that Oracle seemingly killed last week as part of their assimilation / refactoring process. In less than a week, it seems there’s already a commercial organization twilling support the code-base. From ForgeRock’s web page :

ForgeRock OpenAM is the market leading open source Authentication, Authorization, Entitlement and Federation product. ForgeRock is providing the community with a new home for Sun Microsystems’ OpenSSO product.

Good luck to ForgeRock – I recognize quite a few of the names as fellow Sun / iPlanet / Netscape Alumni. It will be interesting to see how this plays out – it got ugly the last time something like this happened.