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."
The big advantage of measuring the fall in IIS vs Apache is that web servers are public, and easily counted.
I'm sure that the same thing is happening thoughout the open source movement, but its just alot harder to measure the number of (for example) Linux installs when there is no central body that really collects data on this (not that there is any need for this).
So its representing a victory for much more than Apache.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
MS's recent campagin of Total Cost Of Ownership does not factor well into this. They cite recent studies which heavily stress human maintenance and development costs into the TCO. Yet what they don't cite is the fact that as software popularity grows, such as Apache here, TCO is driven down because the technology is more accesible.
Basic technology such as web servers are on their way of being removed from the realm of competition. 2004 is promising.
The Custom Mary
Our department is moving from IIS 4.0 to Apache 1.3.29 within the next few months. The server is up & running and I'm working on porting our site over. The reasoning for the switch?
:)
While MS requires patching & monitoring, so does Apache/Linux (although it's not as time-consuming IMO). I also haven't had up-time issues with IIS although I inherently believe Apache would beat IIS in that category.
The true reason is that Apache processes SSI from the outside, while IIS processes them from the inside. I can make more modular code using apache (i.e. a single template for the whole site that the index files link to, and that template links to "content" and "data" files in a given directory). It also seems to perform better, but that's because I was using Access on the IIS machine, and MySQL on the Apache machine. Also Apache/MySQL are cheaper (putting SCO aside).
The only other good reason was to learn something new/different to make myself more marketable.
People don't generally switch web servers just for the heck of it. Obviously, there must be something seriously wrong with IIS to make people switch - I wonder what that could be...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
Web server market share is a funny thing. Do you count the total number of webservers, or just domains? What if you use a very ineffecient implimentation, and it takes twice the number of machines to do it? Should the server get a better market share because of it? The numbers are open to a lot of intepritation.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
We need to a series -- a long series -- of Slashdot interviews with key Apache people. I mean, look at all the stuff they're into. And the list doesn't seem to have any vaporware or bogged-down projects -- which is damned remarkable in the Open Source community, where people tend to be big on ideas and short on followthrough. Let's get these people under the microscope and find out what they're doing right!
If you assumed Apache was *nix only you haven't checked out Apache 2.x on Windows. Perhaps this is the cause of the gain -- Windows users switching to Apache?
Note that the numbers are "per domain" So 2003 is better proclaimed the Year of NameVirtualHost. Hopefully, this means that there really are more httpd's out there, but the correlation was not made in that necraft study. Hopefully someone will do (perhaps already has done?) a study to establish IP# to domain name ratios. My guess is that there is a lot more virtual hosting being done now then there was in, say 1999, when having a corporate web site was more directly related to purchasing dedicated web server equipment. I'll bet that the Microsoft push into public key infrastructure will be used to leverage growth for IIS but at these rates, it may well be hard to catch up with Apache.
:)
But perhaps the real story for 2003, as far as growth technologies go, is likely PHP. The ratio of deployments and actual usage to press coverage of the technology is pretty impressive too.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
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
Netcraft gives very specific rules by which it measures webserver counts here: http://www.netcraft.com/Survey/mechanics.html
:)
Always helps to actually visit the site. Their methods will favor Apache somewhat, as IIS does not generally play very well in hosting environments with virtual domains for various reasons. Of course that in itself is an indicator of server quality
Alright - let's have it! Where are they hiding all the exploits? They obviously have waaaayyyyy more since viruses and exploits are dependant on popularity, not how well the software is engineered. Since Apache is kicking IIS's scraggly ass all over the 'net, it must have more exploits, right? No? Oh? So all those people that keep saying Windows suffers so much are admitting they're wrong?
Oh, that's right. IIS is also an FTP server, mail server, dinner server, and a cheauffer that takes your wife out on dates then screws her in your bed while you're out of town on business.....
... whoops.. sorry, go a little carried away there. Seriously - face it, that's a flaw. If the software wants to do everything, and, by doing everything, fails, it still failed, AND it failed BECAUSE it does everything. That means the Apache software is a better engineered web server and IIS is, well, a load of crap.
Sorry... a little bitter. If you've ever had to administer that horrendous piece of garbage IIS you'd understand. I think, perhaps, the reason Apache is whooping up on IIS is that IIS is so ludicrously twitchy and convoluted. Normally, I'd say point and clicky interfaces are easier to manage, but god... setting something up in IIS that's not set up by default can result in tremendously time-wasting efforts searching through numerous, poorly labeled, badly designed interfaces. Apache? Whip out a reference book, type in a few lines, and you're done. Even if you have to restart the system, it's not much hassle. I've NEVER managed to shut down IIS and bring it back up on Win2k where it didn't stop responding and, eventually, chew up all the resources on the box forcing a hard reboot of the whole system. That pisses off SQL Server which then fucks up the TrendMicro stuff... Ick.
Long story short? IIS sucks and few (smart) people debate that whether they're pro-Microsoft, pro-*nix, pro-Mac, or, smarter than any of them pro-whatever-works.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Even then, how do you count them? How many machines are running any given web site? My sites currently have 8 servers behind a pair of load balancers. But it appears to the outside world as if it's a single machine. Also, do you consider all servers equal? Should my personal site be given equal weight with my company's banking sites? I'd be interested to see a weighted graph so that sites with more traffic have a greater impact. But the problem with that is, how do you measure it?
As an aside, I'm getting mildly concerned about Apache's market share. Not because I don't like it -- I do, and run both personal and corporate sites with it. But I distrust software monocultures, and I fear Apache's heading that way. So I hope that Apache gets some viable competition. I also hope, however, that it comes from somewhere that isn't intent on displacing it with proprietary, incompatible servers. So that'd be something other than IIS, then...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Too much stuff does not work well under Apache 2.0.x. Specifically mod_perl has some interesting gotcha's, HTML::Mason has some issues, there are some Apache::DBI issues, .... long list.
Basically when the server went to 2.0.x, the rest of the supporting community wasn't ready. Most of it is still in testing mode. The 1.3.x branch is "good enough", and it doesn't break stuff. 2.0 is good, but it breaks stuff.
Another way to look at it is that my company ships product based upon 1.3.x. Moving to 2.0.x would require several things which don't yet exist. As we are happily operating under 1.3.x, we have no reason to move. If the Apache folks decide to completely abandon 1.3.x, thats OK as we have source and can fix it as needed.
I suspect that most folks will stay with 1.3.x for the forseeable future. The 2.0.x migration will cause more headache than it is worth, and it will cost money/time.
I find it rather humorous that the poster of the article on Slashdot didn't dare mention the other software that was proven a winner by the Netcraft report. For those of you who haven't RTFA, 4th paragraph begins:
;)
"Seven of the top nine sites run on FreeBSD." That's right, folks. NOT Linux. Don't get me wrong: I don't believe Linux sucks. But there's something to be said here by this data, and I don't feel Linux should get all the current press simply because Linux got all the past press. FreeBSD does amazing things, is used all over the place, has many technical merits not seen elsewhere, but Linux overshadows it because of inertia and the fact that Linux users yell louder. This is sad. Last I knew, Windows won out due to inertia as well, not technical reasons, and we condemn it for that. Must we be hypocritical a second time around?
I know this is Slashdot, but c'mon... would it kill you to put a positive article about FreeBSD on the front-page?
Netcraft confirms it: FreeBSD is quite alive and kicking.
Maybe it's tricky to count market share
It's tricky, alright. It's obvious to anyone that Microsoft's IIS is the clear leader.
Look, if those figures were real, then Apache would be constantly attacked by hoards of script kiddies. [ducks under desk]