Slashdot Mirror
2003: Year of Apache
John Chamberlain writes "Netcraft's numbers for the new year are in. The trend graphs tell a story: 2003 was the Year of Apache. If Time magazine had a server-of-the-year award the cover would be featuring a feather. Since October 2002 market share has grown from 53% to 64%, a 20% gain while Microsoft IIS, its nearest competitor has shrunk from 36% to 24%, a 33% decline. The change in server totals was even more dramatic. Apache HTTP Server increased from about 20 million to 32 million (+60%) while all other competitors remained flat."
Well, 33% of "36" is 12.. 36-12=24.
I wonder though, when Netcraft (and subsequently Slashdot) reported about a rise in ISS-usage, many commented about "But they're just being used as domain parking servers". When the same thing happened but with Apache, most people just say "Yay Apache!"
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
I love apache, but the one thing that bothers me is the two versions (1.3.x and 2.x). I originally started using the 2.x and found that a lot of people weren't using it. Then later to my dismay I found that wanting to adapt PHP would be troublesome so I had to switch to 1.3.x. It's okay either way because it was painless. And no trouble. So take that people who pay for bloated products that work just as well or less than the ever loved free Apache. All hail Apache.
That was a switch from one of the big parking companies, IIRC. Thousands of domains all changed at once. It's one of those things that fits into the "how do we measure this" decision. If a website in the middle of the forest doesn't have an index, is it still counted?
Haida Manga
This analysis includes all sites, but the more realistic and "telling", if you will, analysis would be to look at ACTIVE sites ONLY.
That analysis has been done, and the results were that during 2003, considering new sites, Apache was chosen four times more often than IIS.
You can see the actual figures at http://www.cabalamat.org/weblog/art_182.html.
Apache has 77.54% marketshare, and IIS only has 19.06%.
OPEN YOUR FUCKING EARS, MICROSOFT - Apache was over three times more popular than all other web servers put together.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
You know SCO is running Apache on Linux, right?
A large hosting company started using IIS for the "Coming Soon" pages you see on registered domains.
I can confirm that one...
apache is just so much easier to configure and use...it runs so much smoother, have never had a hiccup or headache with apache.
i don't use php, so using 2.x isnt an issue for me.
as mentioned by others, patching/upgrading is a simple process, be it on linux or windows. no reboots of course, just take the server offline momentarily, run the upgrade, restart server. don't have to worry about your config files being overwritten or anything.
when i first started using apache, i tried both appache and iis, and just found apache sooo much easier to manage, used less resources - all the good stuff kids go for.
and like another person said...the guys over at apache have a lot more than just the webserver going on, if you havent checked out some of their other projects...by all means do!
Another nice thing about Apache, you don't have to take it offline to upgrade it! You can install the upgrade while the old version still serves pages. Once you're done installing the new version:
service httpd restart
and off you go!
Actually, the name comes from "A Patchy Server" because it was built as thousands of patches instead of one reliably growing code tree.
I just don't see this as that significant because of that.
My 2 cents.
A decline in usage of X from 36% to 24% means the incidence of X in the population has declined 12%.
"Since October 2002 market share has grown from 53% to 64%, a 20% gain". Well no. The incidence in the population has increased 11 percentage points (11%), even though the numbers are ~20% different the market share certainly hasn't changed 20%.
Here is an example of basic comprehension of percentage: Assume we have a static population of 100. 53 use Apache and 47 use 'other'. One year later, if 64 use Apache (the population is still 100), the amount of Apache users has increased ~20%, but the amount of the population has increased using Apache is only 11 more, 11% more of the population use Apache. It is therefore correct to say "there are ~20% more Apache users" and it is incorrect to say "market share has grown ~20%" as it has grown 11%.
Yours was a nice lighthearted comment, pity it needs such a detailed explanation for all of the down mods and incorrect replies you've got.
--
FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
I agree. Apache makes good stuff, bottom line. I've used so much of the Jakarta stuff- Tomcat, Velocity, Axis, loads of other utility type libraries. It all works and it all works damn good. And the documentation and support beats anything you'll ever get from Microshaft. Kudos and thanks to whoever these guys are.
I another /. story a month or so ago showed in corporate America IIS is still their choice. Those are the minds that need to be opened up.
I would say corporate America sticks with IIS and other MS products because of MS development products are easy enough for Fred the Beancounter to drag-n-drop an app together. A desk jockey can get something done for his department quick and easy. Good code no, but it gets the job done and it was cheap and that is what the PHB care about.
LAMP tools need to become that easy to use for corporate America to take a look.
Name recognition, and because it works.
I'd never heard of the three webservers you linked to in your post.
Apache has done everything I've ever asked of it without being noticably slow or resouce hogging, even on my iBook when I put up sites in development on our LAN. I can keep working while it happily serves pages to people and I don't notice it's there.
Incidentally, that's a great feature of OS X - Apache out of the box. Sure you need to tweak it a little and enable php and stuff, but it's there ready to go. My previous work method was to upload in-development sites to an old FreeBSD box on the LAN for testing. Now I have my iBook I can work on the html right in place, and just get within AirPort range for everyone I'm working with to have instant access to the site without me having to do anything.
Ok, this wasn't supposed to be an ad for OS X, it was meant to show that Apache is fantastic for what I want to do.
We say "Google runs {A highly customised version of} Apache. So there!". html
http://www.googleblog.ca/archives/000018
When you measure active sites only, Microsoft's market share is 19% and falling.
What is our argument to that? (we don't have one. We just ignore it and continue patting ourselves on the back.)
Actually, we have: If you do not count the number of websites, but the number of pages served, Apache comes out even more in front of IIS as by simply counting the number of servers. For example, where I work we are serving more than a billion web pages - per month. We are using Apache on Suse Linux.
I've used this NetMask utility to mask my IIS server before now(I tried the trial, and its run out), and in the past Netcraft has properly identified the server as running Apache on Redhat 9. This ain't true, as it's running Win2K with IIS5. So I'm wondering, how many of the new servers are what they say they are? And just HOW skewed are the Netcraft results?
Now your host access and error logs for (example.ods.org) have all the real accesses, and the default logs have all the CodeRed, Nimda, Spam Proxy attempts, ISP TOS Checker, and 5cr1p7 k1dd13z.
instead of mod_throttle, mod_bandwidth works with apache2, afaik.
http://www.cohprog.com/mod_bandwidth.html
As usual, AC is spreading FUD. See here
Write boring code, not shiny code!
Yes.
I install it everywhere I can (I probably account for more than 2% of these numbers)!
So YOU'RE the one responsible for all that crap I have to clean up. Bastard! I challenge you to a duel!
Seriously, though, it isn't that I hate tomcat, its that I hate what people do with it. I see more obscenely bizzare setups running under tomcat than any other application server (even IIS). Maybe I'm just cursed. I currently have three clients with tomcat based apps that are so strange they make my ears bleed. (I seem to pick up a lot of clients that spent a lot of money on developers who suddenly go away right around deployment. Profitable, but annoying.) These are classic stupid design choices that make absurd contortions nessessary later on. It isn't that Tomcat requires these designs, but it does seem to somehow attract the people who make them.
If everyone would just accept Mason as the Uber-app, life would be better. One can still do fucked up things in Mason, if you really want to, but it is much easier to un-fuck later on.
I forget what 8 was for.
It puts a bit of a dampener on the "celebration" of Apache's otherwise successful year w.r.t. market share.
Unfrtunately, Apache still defaults to text/plain for content whose type it does not know... IIS is much more sane and defaults to application/octet-stream. Apache's behavior (given IE ignoring MIME types) is the single biggest reason non-IE browsers are starting to ignore MIME types as well.