.NET for Apache
PerlGuy was so kind as to forward us the news about the joint Apache/Microsoft combined press conference scheduled from Wednesday at the OSCON Quote: "We will announce news related to the Apache web server and Microsoft's
development technology, .NET. This should be one of the biggest
announcements of the conference..."
The email he recieved: Covalent Technologies will be holding a press conference at the O'Reilly
Conference on Wednesday at 3:15 in suite 415 (during the afternoon break).
We will announce news related to the Apache web server and Microsoft's
development technology, .NET. This should be one of the biggest
announcements of the conference and an interesting follow up to Microsoft's
appearance last year at the show as well as to their general comments on
open source. Executives will be on hand to answer questions or to conduct
one-on-one interviews after the announcement.
The Mono project hasn't started work on an Apache module yet. But Mono's ASP.NET support is designed such that an Apache 2 module shouldn't have to be longer than around 80 lines of code. It's trivial when you have the right framwork, but we are still a few weeks away from that.
.NET framework on Windows and Apache 2 for Windows. No great deal.
If the guys who've done this have based their work on Mono, they certainly haven't informed the project. My educated guess is that this uses the
Microsoft needs maximum market penetration for .NET, otherwise the initiative fails. EVERYBODY has to play in this particular sandbox, or MS' dream of a services-based software market (with far better growth potential for a monopoly than a product-based market) is bust. IIS is *one product*, one that, in the grand scheme of things, it would be worth sacrificing if it meant .NET ubiquity. The majority of the web runs on Apache, therefore for Microsoft to not support .NET on Apache is to lose the majority of the web. QED.
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What makes me curious is what platforms they'll support Apache on . .
Call me a heretic, but I think .net is a good thing. Not .net as made by Microsoft, but .net as an open standard - for example Mono. The concept of making Web services as easy to run and use as regular applications.
.net is simply recognizing the reality that the Internet is a dynamic medium, and it requires a new way of designing programs; a way that makes using the Web identical to using your computer locally. All of the examples I just gave can be done now with existing programming tools on any platform, but .net makes it much easier and more straightforward. It's nothing particularly difficult, and open source will be quick to replicate it.
.net for Apache support, Mono will be ready to take its place.
I don't want to have everything run on a server and use a dumb terminal. No sense making it even easier for Ashcroft to read my stuff than it already is. But Web services, by nature, are things that already use the Internet - things that might as well be hanging on a building in Times Square, for all Ashcroft cares.
To check stocks, I have to go to cnbc.com. It's an ugly interface. Why can't I double-click on a program that uses native widgets and displays that same information? To read and reply to Slashdot, I have to slashdot.org. It's uglier than a female dwarf (or KDE). Why can't I have Slashdot in a Win32-native interface? Think NNTP, but better-looking and more powerful.
To write a document, I open up AbiWord. If I'm writing a story about the stock market, why can't I just open up my stock market program, drag a box into my document, and have live numbers for the Dow? If I'm writing a story about AMD, why can't I just open up my Slashdot program, drag a box into my document, and have a link to the story inserted into my document; and why can't the person on the other end open the document, double-click my link, and have the Slashdot story opened in place - without needing a web browser?
As Miguel de Icaza said, you shouldn't just not use Mono because it's a copy of a MS product - after all, Linux itself is a copy of non-free UNIX from AT&T. If/when the time comes that Microsoft decides to cut off
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I do not mean to troll you (look at my posting history), but I want to ask: What services do you mean? I don't ask for application specifics, company names, etc, I just hear a lot about web "services" and see very little except planning and idle banter. What would require .NET as long as you have server-side applications which meet the protocols in question? Isn't the point of SOAP that any client can get "services" from a server/app so-equipped? I think I'm missing something.
Would you mind sharing a bit? TIA...
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.