Ask Apache Software Chairman Greg Stein

Here's a man who obviously has his finger on the pulse of open source software development. I mean, who hasn't heard of Apache? His work history is interesting, too: He's moved from Microsoft to CollabNet to Google. And he's not shy about speaking his mind about open source, as shown in this ZDNet blog entry. Please try to confine yourself to one question per post. (If you have more than one question, post more than once.) We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to Greg tomorrow and run his answers when we get them back.

Business Sense?

[RingDev]

From TFB: "I predict that in 5-10 years most of the software you use will be free."

Does he also predict that in 5-10 years most software development position will be gone or significantly value reduced the also?

The obvious answer is no, the market will find a balance between free and non-free business models to support further development. Some one has to pay the developers to put bread on the table. Someone has to pay the advertisers to get the word out about the project. Someone has to pay the management to keep the project on task and schedule.

-Rick

Free Stuff is great, but....

[celardore]

Free & Open software is great on the most part, but developers need to pay bills too. If all software was free and open, who'd want to learn to make it?

Why no other major httpd projects?

[Soko]

The Apache license allows for non or commercial distribution of Apache or a direct derivetive (with attribution), but I don't see any other products or projcts based on the Apache codebase (I know there are some) that are nearly as popular as Apache itself. Can you answer why this is?

Soko

Time Management?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am currious how you balance work and familly life. I find it difficult to keep up with all the Apache projects because they grow at such a fast rate. Do you try to keep up on all the Apache projects? How much time do you spend learning vs working on projects? Do you tend to work on weekends and holidays? What do you do with your spare time and do you have enough of it?