Mark J Cox | Home automation | Open Source Software | Security | Metrics

Apache Week

Fri, 01 Oct 2004 01:01:00 GMT

I joined UK Web in early 1996 with Paul Sutton. One of our areas of expertise was the Apache Web Server and UK Web started offering Apache support services. At the time the only sources of information for Apache users was the manual or the developers mailing list (which was very high volume). So Apache Week was created in Feb 1996 to produce a weekly summary of everything that was new about the Apache web server as well as new features. Over the years we had a number of other contributors at UK Web, C2Net, and Red Hat including James Coates, Joe Orton, Min Min Tsan, Paul Weinstein.

We stopped producing Apache Week at the end of 2004 and folded our extensive security section into the main Apache site.

Apache Week

Stronghold Web Server

Wed, 01 Nov 2000 00:00:00 GMT

In 1998, Paul Sutton and I developed Stronghold, a secure web server based on Apache for the international market.

Stronghold was originally a mix of open and closed source software; we didn't give out the source to the crypto libraries initially in order to comply with the wishes of the certification authorities at that time. Those libraries were a mix of things from Apache and SSLeay but with our own glue logic based on some original code from Thawte consulting and later moved to mod_ssl. As part of our transition to mod_ssl we opensourced a lot of code and submitted it to the mod_ssl project, including fixes to SSL session caching.

Copy of Stronghold Web Site from 1998

History:

Nov�2000	Launched 24x7 telephone support service for Apache
Aug�2000	C2Net aquired by Red Hat more...
May�2000	Stronghold 3.0 released based on mod_ssl. C2Net contributed significant amounts of previously proprietary source code into the mod_ssl project more...
Jan�2000	C2Net announced continued profitability, with 1999 revenues of US$3.25 million more...
Jun�1999	Stronghold recevied approval for Global Server IDs more...
Dec�1998	C2Net contributed seed source code to start the OpenSSL project
Jun�1998	C2Net hosted the first ever Apache Conference, ApacheCon'98, with 500 registrations more... more...
Jan�1998	C2Net opens a European office, taking over the Apache business from UK Web more...
Jan�1998	C2Net writes the first implementation of the TLS protocol and makes it available in Stronghold more...
Jun�1997	Stronghold is the first web server to support a hardware cryptographic accelerator more...
May�1997	Stronghold 2.0 released more...
Sep�1996	UK Web joined with C2Net to bring full strength cryptography to Stronghold world-wide
Feb�1996	UK Web Launched the first comprehensive support service for Apache
Feb�1996	Launched free Apache Week publication
Dec�1995	Launched Apache-SSL package based on Apache 1.0.0 for USA and Canada more...

About C2Net

Mon, 11 Sep 2000 00:00:00 GMT

Based in California and founded by Sameer Parekh, C2Net began marketing privacy protection services for ISP subscribers in 1994. Expanding on this vision, the company went on to recruit highly skilled encryption and security programmers to produce an entire line of Internet data security products. Developing the software outside the US, these products were available world-wide.

Copy of C2Net Web page from August 2000

To ensure C2Net's position as a global leader in providing full strength cryptography products, C2Net Europe Ltd was founded in November 1997 to head up world-wide product development and promote C2Net's product line outside the USA. To do this C2Net bought some technology and employees from UK Web, a small company based in England. Mark J. Cox was Managing Director of C2Net Europe Ltd. Paul Sutton was Technical Director.

C2Net's flagship product was the Stronghold Secure Web Server, an SSL server for Unix with full-strength, 128-bit encryption. SafePassage Secure Tunnel was developed to secure TCP/IP transmissions and before changes in US export laws made 128-bit browsers globally available, C2Net gained a reputation for its SafePassage Web Proxy. Major banks and international corporations used this client-side software to add full strength encryption to 40-bit export crippled browsers.

C2Net believed in making the best even better. Taking the world's favourite Web server, Apache, C2Net developers added features and functionality to make Stronghold Web Server the unbeatable option for commercial applications. A commitment to providing the best technical support available together with customer focused product development put C2Net at the cutting edge of e-business security software providers.

The people behind C2Net were heavily involved in Apache, and part of company philosophy was to support open-source projects. Since 1995, C2Net employed core Apache, OpenSSL, SSLeay and mod_ssl developers some of whom had contributed to Apache since version 0.5. In addition to providing development resources, C2Net organised the first ever Apache developers' conference, ApacheCon '98, and published a weekly online journal for Apache users. Now in its sixth year, Apache Week has over 11,000 subscribers to the e-mail version and is still going strong. Proud to be involved with the Apache project since the beginning, part of C2Net's long-term commitment to openly available software was an ongoing contribution of time and developer resources.

C2Net's first secure web server was launched on December 20 1995. This initial version, released exclusively for the US market, was known as "Apache-SSL-Commerce". In 1996, the first product released for global markets was an all-new commercial version of Apache with added security. From then on, the server was branded as Stronghold Web Server. Stronghold Web Server soon became the leading SSL Web Server for Unix platforms. Within 2 months of international release, the Netcraft server survey showed an increase of 500% in Stronghold Web Server installations and for a number of years was consistently been rated the number one choice. Stronghold Web Server can claim many firsts including support for hardware acceleration, support for client certificates (Digital IDs), HTTP/1.1 support, TLS v1.0 support, and was also the first Apache-based server to support Verisign's Global Server IDs.

By 2000, C2Net had built a world-class management team comprising:

Bill Rowzee. President & CEO. With over 15 years experience as CEO and CFO of a major technology company.
Sameer Parekh. Named one of the "50 People Who Matter Most on the Internet" by Newsweek magazine
Douglas Barnes. Extensive experience of the computer industry including patent enforcement
John Gilmore. Co-founder of Cygnus Solutions, the EFF, Cypherpunks.
Mark J Cox. Core team member of open source projects, Managing Director of C2Net Europe.

C2Net was aquired by Red Hat Inc. in September 2000.

Sky teletext and Internet games

Mon, 01 May 2000 00:00:00 GMT

Co-author of interactive teletext and Internet games for Sky including a custom-written high-reliability fast remote database system and a complete development and staging platform. 1996-2000.

Fantasy Football 1998 (Screenshot)

Superbikes 1999 (Screenshot)

Cricket World Cup 1999 (Screenshot)

European Football 2000 (Screenshot 1, Screenshot 2, Screenshot 3, Screenshot 4)

(and many others)

Bradford Robotic Telescope

Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 GMT

Designed and developed systems for the Bradford Robotic Telescope including creation of the Web interface to the telescope as well as many network, system programs, database systems, ISDN PPP networking, large scale user authentication system and autonomous house-keeping and security systems (Perl, C, Assembler).

I started working with John Baruch on the Bradford Robotic Telescope after finishing my Degree in 1992.

My first attempts at Internet control of the telescope were in March 1993 when I started a gopher server. Interaction with users via gopher was fairly limited and by early 1994 we'd completed switched over to using the World-Wide Web. Using the Web for interaction in 1994 was frustrating and I created many patches to NCSA httpd to deal with several security issues I found and extra functionality such as large scale authentication. It was hard to get browsers to work properly, and we had to rely on users using Mozilla 0.6 as it was the only browser that was able to POST to an authenticated area. At the end of 1994 we gained a lot of press interest and was featured in a segment on the Australian show "Beyond 2000".

I left the University of Bradford (and my nearing-completion PhD) in 1995.

Random photos:

see all at flickr.com

Ramair

Sun, 01 Jan 1989 01:01:00 GMT

In 1988 I joined the University of Bradford student radio station, Radio Ramair, and soon became Chief Engineer. The following year I was voted Station Manager.

During my time at Ramair I applied for, financed, and managed the first special-event license to allow a UK student radio station to broadcast legally across a city in FM. Prior to that we were limited to broadcasting to halls using local aerials in AM, and the occasional special event in AM across Bradford. We did 4-5 FM events a year from our two studios. The first broadcast was on 100.7MHz on October 3rd 1990.

Ramair official site

Photos:

see all at flickr.com