In a move that was probably designed to fan the fires of the Open Source community, Apache made the announcement by posting the news on the Slashdot.org web site, which was projected on a viewscreen in front of the closing ceremony audience.

This pre-release version of Apache 2.0a provides several improvements over the previous (1.3) release, including:

• Unix Threading - for Unix systems with POSIX threads support, Apache will be able to operate in a hybrid multiprocess, multithreaded mode; this should improve scalability
• New Build System - the build system has been rewritten from scratch to be based on autoconf and libtool; this makes configuration system for Apache more similar to that of other packages, and thus, easier to use
• Multiprotocol Support - this release of Apache has some infrastructure in place which will support the serving of multiple protocols; mod_echo has been written as just such an example
• Better support for non-Unix platforms - this release should be faster and more stable on non-Unix platforms such as BeOS, OS/2, and Windows; with the introduction of platform-specific multiprocessing modules and the Apache Portable Runtime, these platforms will be able to avoid using POSIX-emulation functions that can tend to be buggy and hurt the web server's performance
• New API - the API for modules has been significantly changed for this release; many of the module-ordering problems from 1.3 should be gone; much of this is accomplished automatically, and module ordering is done per-hook to enable additional flexibility; new calls have been added that should enable modules to do more without requiring patching of the core Apache server

Related Stories:
Apache Brings Open Source to XML
ServerWatch's Listing for Apache 1.x


24/7 Media, chinadotcom Establish Loyalty Venture in Asia
Merger News Sweeps Through Net Sector