Tiscali on Cherokee
This interview was originally published in Tiscali's technology portal:
This is the translation of the interview.
Alvaro Lopez Ortega
"The best way to improve the server is to listen to the users"
Alvaro Lopez Ortega is an engineer, born in Madrid, who has
designed a Free web server, which he has named Cherokee as a
humorous wordplay on the well known Apache project.
What is the Cherokee Web Server?
Cherokee is a project in which we're developing a high performance web server. Well, actually that isn't the only target, but currently it is the most important task. It is a web server focused in being fast, flexible and entirely based on loadable modules. By default, Cherokee is a tiny server that doesn't know how to do anything, and based in the configuration file it loads the necessary functionality from small modules. This architecture gives us the ability to keep the server as small as possible, thereby preventing it from wasting machine resources.
How have you improved this program? What are its virtues?
Cherokee is improving every single day. In fact, in the last few months the project's rate of development has increased due the growth of it's community. The way to improve the server is simple: basically it entails listening to the users' needs. It is very important to know what they think, what they would like to have in the next release, and what they think we should improve, and then we have to prioritize all that stuff in order to complete those tasks that have the biggest impact on the user community first. Finally, the most important tasks are those which will form part of the next version of the server. Personally, I think the virtues of Cherokee are twofold. The first one is the way we are managing the project targets: it doesn't aim to conquer the world in one day, we know what we want to do and how to organize the team to reach the target. The second one, which I think is important in the Cherokee project, is the excellent technical skill of the people that are contributing to it. All the people who are working on the technical side have a vocation for it and we enjoy what we do. Of course, we shouldn't forget about the fact that Cherokee is Free Software, and that development model provides it with a number of advantages: the user community, the public revision of the code, external contributors, etc.
Do you work only on Free Software programs?
Yes, but it isn't a vital option for me. I guess it's something like being a vegetarian, there are people who believe that they shouldn't eat anything coming from animals, but nothing prevents them from eating a steak if the doctor says that they need more protein in their diet. Personally I think that there are may advantages in the Free Software development model, and I believe it is leading a well-needed revolution against some practices of the current IT industry. However, I still have some doubts over the economic viability of some Free Software projects. That is a though subject, which is being researched, and that research exposes some contradictions. In any case, my whole professional carreer has been linked to Free Software and the Open Source and I'm really happy about that. In know that what I've done is good for many people. And that counts.
Is it possible to use Cherokee in all the Operating Systems?
Yes. Currently it supports the most important ones: Linux, Windows and Solaris. However there aren't any problems running it on MacOS or FreeBSD. The Windows version is the most recent one. The project began on Linux, and after the first development phases we ported it to other Unix flavors, and that has been the project's state until a few months ago, when we began the Windows porting effort. I don't use Windows, but I do understand perfectly how important it is to have a working version of Cherokee on that platform. In the last few weeks I've done a lot of work to finish that Windows port, and I have to say that it's working wonderfully. In comparison with the other ports, this was hardest one to get working.
