The Rodent's Burrow

Another, "Playboy.com is listed as a mirror for downloading Apache software. Is that true? If it is, I think it's disgusting, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves, and I'm telling everyone I know to shun Apache!" message. These really pop my corn.

Yes, it's true. Here's a hint: get a grip. How much are you paying for the software? How much have you contributed to the livelihoods of the developers who have put major portions of their free time into it?

We don't judge our mirror sites — at least not morally. Things like 'can they handle it' and 'are they well-enough connected and have the bandwidth to be a reliable mirror' — judgements of that sort, yes.

When playboy.com first became a mirror, the moral issue was discussed extensively first. The conclusion was that trying to apply morality to decisions of this sort was a slippery slope. Should we deny one political candidate just because most of the Apache people prefer his opponent? Should we only allow sites that are owned by Christians? Or Mithraists? Or tall people? Or whites?

Sure, that sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? "Besides," you might say, "there are laws against discrimination based on criteria like those." As it happens, there are also laws (in the U.S.) against discriminating based on someone's opinions or beliefs.

So we don't discriminate at all, except on quantifiable technical grounds such as bandwidth. If you don't like a particular mirror, download from a different one. If you don't like the fact that The Apache Software Foundation doesn't share your point of view, download some other organisation's software.

We don't impose our morality on anyone. (As if there's a single morality for a group consisting of hundreds of rugged individualists.) We make our software freely available, and take advantage of donations of bandwidth from anyone who cares to make them, and ask nothing of you.

Playboy.com contributes bandwidth. What do you contribute?