Interview with creator of Nginx, Igor Sysoev

http://www.webhostingskills.com/open_source/articles/interview_with_creator_of_nginx_igor_sysoev

by rehack • 14 years ago

158 43 14 years ago

buster3• 14 years ago

It's a shame that the author didn't take the oportunity to mak e the answers more readable. I read about one third of the article but found it to confusing and difficult to read :(

mjs• 14 years ago

I think I'd almost prefer to read the questions and answers Google Translated from Russian!

buster3• 14 years ago

Definitely! As a matter of fact the first google translated russian article i've read was from Igor Sysoev! I remember it so well because i was really surprised by the quality of the translation of such a highly technical text..

codemole• 14 years ago

The original habrahabr article can be found here: http://habrahabr.ru/company/xakep/blog/136354/

Its google-translated result does look very similar to the submitted article, however.

zerop2• 14 years ago

Google-translated -- http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...

golovast• 14 years ago

You're right, my eyes were hurting from reading it. I had some time today and banged out a better and a more readable translation.(I hope).

http://mindend.com/index.php/interview-with-the-creator-of-n...

rehack• 14 years ago

Thanks! I had seen the translated interview on this wiki page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Sysoev. I took the liberty of updating the wiki page with your translation as well.

buster3• 14 years ago

Wow, great thanks, now i can continue reading :)

Tomis02• 14 years ago

Learned something new today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomizat...

Simucal• 14 years ago

A few years ago I was playing around with some examples from the infamous 1996 article, "Smashing the Stack for Fun and Profit".

I was somewhat dismayed to find all these new fangled protections like ASLR and Stack Protection that made executing simple buffer overflows much more difficult! I realize that these are good things but as a student of security it did raise the bar of difficulty for writing real-world exploits.

You need to compile your programs with the necessary flags to turn off these protections or if that isn't an option you need to try and use various counter measures like NOP slides, heap sprays, stack cookie replacement etc. I wish I had been around to enjoy what seems like must have been the golden era of the 90's when writing buffer overflows was relatively easy.

emillon• 14 years ago

> I wish I had been around to enjoy what seems like must have been the golden era of the 90's when writing buffer overflows was relatively easy.

There are a lot of more primitive computing devices which don't have such protections. For example, ASLR was added to android as late as version 4.0 (2011).

darkarmani• 14 years ago

Here is Mark Dowd's amazing BlackHat talk from 2008, that demolished MS' new ASLR protections.

I've linked the google quick view, so you don't have to trust the PDF link: https://docs.google.com/a/continuum.io/viewer?a=v&q=cach...

malkia• 14 years ago

Haven't read it yet, but heard a lot of good things about nginx. Just wanted to mention that the author has a very cool family name :)

EvanMiller• 14 years ago

Igor has been one of my programmer heroes for many years now, and I'm glad to learn more about his background through this article. The reading's a bit tough, as many verbs appear to be missing and a few Russian words remain untranslated. Some interesting takeaways:

* Igor wrote Nginx while working as a sysadmin for Rambler. Classic bottom-up innovation: he could see Apache's shortcomings in a very up-close and personal way. This also explains why Rambler does not hold the copyright on Nginx (see the end of the interview).

* He is quite modest when comparing Nginx to other web servers. This reflects well on his character, but perhaps has "slowed" the adoption of Nginx. It's clear from this article that Igor is an engineer, not a salesman. I find this to be refreshing in an era when many open-source projects seem to achieve adoption by being the loudest, rather than by being the best.

* Igor put off starting a company until there was just too much work for him to do alone. I liked this quote: "I rarely change my life direction: for example, [before] Rambler, I spent seven years working for a company, [and at] Rambler, I also worked for ten years. Change is hard for me. But, nevertheless, by the spring of this year, I did finally decide to found a company that would help the further development of the project."

* Despite having U.S. investors, Nginx's engineering team is based in Russia. One interpretation is that you don't need to be in the Valley to develop a first-rate product; you just need to be in the Valley when it's time to hustle it.

Anyway, an interesting read. Apparently this article is his first public interview. I know Igor doesn't like publicity, but it's inspiring to read his story.

Radim• 14 years ago

The modesty is refreshing indeed.

"I do not know how to lead people"

"[Company] will remain small - to grow the company of several hundred people, we do not want."

Compare that to the typical Silicon Valley swagger of all the productless please-sign-up-launching-soon startups; different mentality indeed.

Good for business? Who knows... but I have to wonder what the reaction of the US investors to all this was :)

maratd3• 14 years ago

> Despite having U.S. investors, Nginx's engineering team is based in Russia.

Not only is it based in Russia, it is 100% Russian. If that doesn't scare the shit out of you, then I already know that you're not Russian =)

> One interpretation is that you don't need to be in the Valley to develop a first-rate product

I'll stick with Apache HTTPD and the Apache Foundation, despite its alleged shortcomings.

The web server is front and center in pretty much every business. I'll pass on an outfit that sticks communist imagery into its logo.

mitjak2• 14 years ago

Do you also avoid Chinese and German products for similar reasons? If so, are you a time traveller from 1952?

sbochins• 14 years ago

Shouldn't we base technological choices on technology. Considering we're not living in the 1950's anymore I don't think the fear of "Russians" should play such a large role in web server choices.

BasDirks• 14 years ago

how come you're not downvoted all the way to hell yet?

ArbitraryLimits• 14 years ago

Keep an eye on your precious bodily fluids. They're the first thing to go.

nnq3• 14 years ago

...in what context would this make any sense?: "If that doesn't scare the shit out of you, then I already know that you're not Russian =)"

josephlord• 14 years ago

It is BSD licensed. If you are worried build from source. It is sufficiently widely used that someone would notice anything too malicious.

TeMPOraL2• 14 years ago

I believe he meant the opposite of what seems to be understood - in stereotypes russians are highly respected for being extremely smart and resourceful, to the point of being completely badass for western standards.

For example, in Poland we sometimes joke about how russian/soviet technology came only in two kinds - if a device won't fall apart immediately after start, it will last forever. It's mostly meant to be whining about "planned obsolescence" and other business attitudes that came from west, that ultimately is about short term money gain for producers on the expense of consumers' money, happiness and natural resources.

Fando• 14 years ago

Interesting Read.

zerop2• 14 years ago

Google-translated the original article from here: http://habrahabr.ru/company/xakep/blog/136354/

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...

arscan• 14 years ago

Its interesting that nginx's ability to handle many connections was partially driven by the fact that it was developed to support sites that had dialup users. I thought it was built that way to support emerging web traffic patterns (high volume & persistent connections), but really it was to serve an existing (somewhat legacy) need.

nnq3• 14 years ago

This guy is like Linus T. with the ego surgically removed ...really doesn't try to "sell himself" ...he should start doing some corporate training classes to teach people this skill of his.

sbt• 14 years ago

Kudos to Sysoev and Nginx. Whenever I write C code I find myself looking at nginx for inspiration, always keeping the source code open to see if and how they solved similar problems. It is simply one of the best pieces of software I have read.

jfolkins• 14 years ago

Nginx rules, but the funniest mistranslation out if this article is

"you can play with yourself in an accident"

Had me a gig-a-lin.

dschiptsov• 14 years ago

Very good success story of a so-called nerd, or a natural engineer mentality, or, a mildly autistic character, if we prefer a language of a modern science.

It is from this mindset came out the marvels of engineering - first versions of Lisp, UNIX, C and Plan9, and Erlang and designs of hardware and processors, all the best quality engineering we could have.

It is picking and hiring this kind of people is what this site or whole Silicone Valley is all about.

http://karma-engineering.com/lab/wiki/Hiring

Interview with creator of Nginx, Igor Sysoev

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