I was chatting with Chris Mattmann earlier today, and was doing some archeology to determine when the serf project was really started. The answer to that is September, 2001.
But here is where it gets more interesting... Serf was actually started as "apr-serf". A project within the APR household to create an HTTP client library. Coding happened in APR between June 2002 and September 2003. But APR decided that serf didn't fit within its "portability" realm, so the ASF created a TLP called "Apache Commons". That was nominally for various common-functionality libraries like serf and specifically like Apache Jakarta Commons. Serf moved over to Commons that September [2003]. Well... Commons never really worked. Only Justin and I were committing to Serf, and that certainly doesn't meet the ASF's "three +1's" rule. Commons never really took off because the Jakarta Commons people felt the "Commons" brand had been stolen from them, so they didn't join in. So... Commons got shut down, and in August 2004, Serf moved to a private svn repository that was being run on svn.webdav.org. It later moved to Google Code right after it was launched in July 2006. That's where it has lived ever since. But here is one of the more interesting facts... not so apparent in the above history: Apache Commons, and more specifically serf, decided to be the guinea pig for Subversion running at the ASF: gstein:~/src/svn$ svn log -r 1 ^/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ r1 | gstein | 2003-01-15 06:46:49 -0500 (Wed, 15 Jan 2003) | 1 line initial check-in to set up Apache Commons ------------------------------------------------------------------------ and the first serf commit, as a result of an imported cvs2svn: gstein:~/src/svn$ svn log -r 5 ^/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ r5 | rbb | 2001-09-29 01:20:55 -0400 (Sat, 29 Sep 2001) | 2 lines Initial revision ------------------------------------------------------------------------ and the *very first piece of code* committed to the ASF Subversion repository: gstein:~/src/svn$ svn log -r 10 ^/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ r10 | jerenkrantz | 2002-06-19 06:34:51 -0400 (Wed, 19 Jun 2002) | 5 lines This provides a starting point for a concrete discussion of the API. It is by no means correct or even valid. It's just lets us start to coordinate the API somewhat. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Serf and Subversion have had a long history, much of it revolving around the ASF. One day, Serf may return. All of its committers sign ICLAs with the ASF. Its community and usage is growing to where it may be sustainable as an Apache community. Hope y'all have enjoyed this little archeology expedition. Few people ask how Subversion actually got brought into the ASF. Well... there's your answer :-) Have fun, -g
