[Xitami] Log files not being generated with no data

[Magnus Wedberg]

> Thanks to all those who responded. I have emailed imatix about the
> future or status of xitami development and support, and have as yet
> received no reply. I believe nothing has happened in the way of
> development with xitami since late 2004. I do really wonder whether
> there is any point in continuing to use xitami, and as I have need for
> ssl, I was considering xitami pro.

The answer to this was posted way back in 2004 by Pieter Hintjens 
(see large quote below). Xitami is since long obsoleted for 
production environments BUT for one task: serving up static content, 
where it's still a very good choice thanks to its blazing speed (even 
on low-end systems). I think Zeus is faster still, but Zeus costs 
money. Xitami easily outperforms Apache in a smaller footprint, but 
Apache easily outperforms Xitami on dynamic content as Xitami needs 
to run everything as CGI processes.

Of course, in specific cases (low powered memory-starved systems) 
Xitami may still be a top choice. As usual for complex questions, the 
answer is "it depends". I'm still running Xitami on my own box for 
development purposes, but might switch to Apache, haven't decided 
yet. My live server runs Apache since a year or so.


***** BEGIN QUOTE *****


Hello, we are here.  Busy, but here.

I'm sorry we don't spend more time reading and replying to the Xitami 
list.  It's one of many things we have to spend time on, and 
inevitably gets less attention that it deserves.  

Xitami is, obviously, a project that is fairly static.  We make 
patches now and then, especially when there are security issues.  The 
server solves a problem for many people but we cannot compete with 
the huge resources put behind products like Apache, and we would be 
foolish to try.  

Allow me to explain briefly where we are and how we got here...

When we started Xitami in 1996 the goal was not to develop a web 
server so much as to demonstrate a way of building servers.  That's 
why it was open source from day 1.  Unfortunately (for our spare time 
and personal lives), we were dragged kicking and screaming into 
developing our prototype into a real working server.  I can speak for 
most of the Xitami team when I say that it has always been a real 
pleasure to see our work used by so many enthusiastic people, but 
that the flip side has been a support burden that rapidly became 
impossible.  

In 2000-01 or so, we were forced to concentrate on earning money: 
this was banal and much less satisfying than making Xitami better but 
the few licenses we sold for Xitami/Pro did not start to cover even 
our network costs, let alone work on the product.  

I've been asked by members of our team to "officially declare Xitami 
dead" several times.  I've resisted.  We use the software ourselves.  
We use it on websites and in products like smt@ (www.sms-at.com), 
which is one of the ways we make a living.  

We spoke to the Apache team in 1999 and were happy to see that they 
were heading towards an architecture like ours: a portability layer, 
a bunch of protocol handlers, a fully portable server.  Today Apache 
2 is a fast, portable server and seriously: you should be using 
Apache 2 instead of Xitami unless there are specific things Xitami 
does better for you.  

At iMatix we're going through the same boom/bust/boom cycles as 
everyone else in the industry.  We made some money in 1999-2001, we 
lost most of it in 2002-2003, and we're now growing again with some 
interesting projects.  So iMatix is definitely here, and will be for 
a long time.  

But... Xitami as a living product... it's clearly something who's 
time has come and gone.  The need for a small, fast, portable web 
server was painfully obvious in 1997-2000, and we are proud to have 
achieved what we did.  But today it's a niche product.  

We will continue to provide updates of Xitami, we will continue to 
publish the source code.  Other people may spend the time building 
binaries and nice installers - this is no longer our job.  

I hope this is a satisfactory answer.

On behalf of the Xitami team, which has included myself, Ewen 
McNeill, Jonathan Schultz, Julie Pesesse, and numerous other people 
in various roles over the years, I'd like to thank our users, friends 
and contributers for their patience and good will.  It has not been 
easy to spend such a huge effort in writing what we consider to be an 
excellent server, and to see it become almost totally irrelevant, but 
your feedback and support over the years has made it worthwhile.  

-- 
Pieter Hintjens
iMatix

***** END QUOTE *****
 
 
-- 
Magnus Wedberg
http://www.magnuswedberg.com/
mw AT 9000.org
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