Mod_authnz_external Needs a New Maintainer (and There is a New Release)

[Jan Wolter]

I've been maintaining mod_authnz_external for almost 15 years, since the job was passed to me by Tyler Allison, who got it from the original author, Nathan Neulinger. Partly to add features, but mostly just to keep up with the evolution of Apache's API, I've done several rewrites and I doubt if a single line of code survives from the version I first saw. But my sysadmin days are long gone, and I haven't actually USED mod_authnz_external in anything other than test installations for many years. I've gotten to be rather slow at getting new releases out as Apache evolves. It's time to pass the job on to someone new.

So I'm looking for one or more people to take over the maintenance of mod_authnz_external, mod_authz_unixgroup, and pwauth. I'd likely remain on the list of maintainers for pwauth, but would prefer to resign the other two entirely. The projects are all hosted on google code, so adding maintainers is simple.

I think this stuff is still pretty widely used, though I don't really have any idea how widely. The previous release had about 1300 downloads, but I expect many people who use it get it from other sources. I only get maybe a dozen questions or comments in my email every year, but I've documented it all to the gills, so the number of perplexed users may not be indicative of the number of users. The minimum job is to update the module to maintain compatibility to new versions of Apache. I haven't been doing much in the way of new features for a while, but there are possibilities, like adding the ability to communicate with authentication daemons instead of launching a new process for each authentication.

By the way, there is a new release of mod_authnz_external for Apache 2.4. It compiles better for more recent releases of Apache, is a bit smarter about load-balancing servers, and fixes a bug that probably affected very few people. If your current version is working for you, there is no need to upgrade.

Thanks,
                                - Jan Wolter