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!
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
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!
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.
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?