Microsoft Sponsors Apache Software Foundation

gbjbaanb writes "Ars Technica reports that Microsoft is to sponsor the Apache Foundation to the tune of $100k. From the article: 'I asked him if this could possibly be the beginning of a broader initiative by Microsoft to increase Apache compatibility with .NET web development technologies, but he says it's still too early to guess Microsoft's future plans for Apache participation. ... He doesn't anticipate a confrontational response from the developers working on individual Apache projects ... The response of the broader open source software community, however, is harder to predict.' (In related news, MS also intends to participate in the RubySpec project.)"

Comments

frist

[pyro_dude]

p0st

Cliche?

[Johnny_Law]

Would, "It's a trap", be too cliche?

Re:Cliche?

[devinteske]

Perhaps the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag should be added?

Re:Cliche?

[pallmall1]

Would, "It's a trap", be too cliche?

I believe the term is "embrace".

Extend and extinguish to follow.

Re:Cliche?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would, "It's a trap", be too cliche?

No, since you ask. It would be too clichéd.

Re:Cliche?

[scott_karana]

Money is the only language Microsoft speaks.
The fact that they're giving some can't ENTIRELY be frowned on. :)

Re:Cliche?

[mysticgoat]

I read this news yesterday and I was too stunned to reply. I had to go out into the Big Blue Room and do some yard work. Mow the lawn, that kind of thing. Get grounded. Get grass stains on my sandals.

This is exactly the kind of thing that Microsoft needs to start doing if it is going to survive in the post-capitalist economy of FOSS. The changes wrought by FOSS might never have much bearing on the general economy, but they have profoundly changed the economics of information technology. These changes are so fundamental that there is no way software development and marketing is ever going to go back to the way things were when Microsoft was a rising star. The 1980s and 1990s are over: Microsoft has managed to coast on its ballistic momentum for nearly a decade since it hit its peak, but now it needs to either learn to fly on the same invisible substance that supports the FOSS birds, or it is going to come to a sudden ballistic terminal grounding.

I'd hate to see that happen. As much as I dislike Microsoft's leadership and direction, it is a magnificent organization of resources that could produce a lot of great stuff.

However Microsoft has such an incredibly bad history of dishonesty and betrayals of trust, especially with "partners", that I remain skeptical.

Hopeful. But skeptical.

A better sponsorship

[Rinisari]

A better sponsorship would be to quit developing IIS and focus all of its development staff on Apache for Windows, and Apache in general. Apache already dominates, make it better.

Re:A better sponsorship

[bsDaemon]

Couldn't the same argument be used in reverse -- quit developing for KDE/GNOME, Windows already dominates, develop for that?

Oh, that's right -- monoculture is ok so long as its your monoculture.

Re:A better sponsorship

[Ambiguous Puzuma]

A better sponsorship would be to quit developing IIS and focus all of its development staff on Apache for Windows, and Apache in general. Apache already dominates, make it better.

Doesn't that run counter to the idea that monoculture is bad in computing?

Re:A better sponsorship

[RingDev]

So let me get this straight... you are lobbying for an elimination of competition, collusion, and handing a controlling interest of Apache over to MS?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for compatibility between IIS and Apache, but to beg for either one of them to get snuffed out seems like an awfully huge risk.

-Rick

Re:A better sponsorship

[dedazo]

I sure as hell hope not, I cannot begin to list all the advantages of running IIS+.NET on Server 2003 over [insert language] and mod_whatever on Apache. Having to muck around with httpd.conf and chmod wouldn't exactly be an improvement over their current stack, especially for intra-corp applications.

(I realize the above paragraph might hurt some fanboys - sorry. You can have your platform, I recognize its strengths. Just leave mine alone)

This is probably part of Microsoft's push to make things like PHP and Ruby work better on Windows. After all, they'd rather you run WAMP than LAMP. They've been engaged with Zend on the FastGCI implementation for IIS that makes PHP so much better on Windows. I don't think they see IIS as some sacred cow to be protected. Again, as long as you're running everything on Windows Server =)

Re:A better sponsorship

[clampolo]

A better sponsorship would be to quit developing IIS and focus all of its development staff on Apache for Windows,

NOOOOOO!!!!In general I dislike most of Microsoft's technologies. First they make MFC. Code usually looks like someone threw up on the monitor. Then they go and get the same guy that came up with MFC to write C#, which is also horrible. And to top it off, on top of the crap that is C# they pile on things like Forms, WPF, and 1000s of other things that are all hideous.

No company in history has made uglier looking API's. The nice thing about open source is that if you don't like some API, there is a good chance someone has written another one that you will like.

Re:A better sponsorship

[Penguinisto]

So, err, where do I download this mystical .rpm or .deb file that puts a Windows GUI on Linux?

Is it in one of the unsupported repos, perhaps? Not that I have a use for it, but it'd be fun to play with, I guess...

/P

Re:A better sponsorship

[bsDaemon]

I was mostly referring to application development which depends on a certain desktop, rather than "independent" apps or other *nix-specifics.

Re:A better sponsorship

[Foofoobar]

Well to use an analogy, if Apache and IIS were car companies, one is manufacturing cars that get 200 MPG, with keyless entry security systems that are highly customizable and can be purchased for $10. The other company makes a car that runs on baby kittens, can be hijacked everytime you go under 30 MPH (and whose top speed is 35 MPH) and can be purchased for $100,000.

Who do you think deserves the market in this case?

Re:A better sponsorship

[bsDaemon]

If market share were determined by who deserved it, we'd have non-profit pharmas, home-based rapid-production kits, and most "work" would be a thing of the past.

However, the future will probably be more like Minority Report than Star Trek.

Re:A better sponsorship

[Foofoobar]

Well that is true in a world of closed source code but not in the open source world where security reviewers and amateurs are always looking at your code. When the whole world has access to your code all the time, you always have to be improving it and working on it.

When it is closed (such as IE was) you can sit on it and not develop for years. Keeping things open causes more people to force you to stay on your game or else they will eventually fork it. Thats kind of what happened with Mozilla and Firefox; Mozilla wasn't really doing things right so Firefox was created. Lucky for them he was willing to work WITH them.

Re:A better sponsorship

[debatem1]

I have no doubt that you're a highly experienced WAMP admin, and that you know IIS on a first name basis, but if you're having trouble with chmod, its probably time to walk out of the server room.

Re:A better sponsorship

[GigaHurtsMyRobot]

bwaahahahahaha it runs on baby kittens!! :) I don't have any mod points for you, but you just made my day, thank you.

Re:A better sponsorship

[godefroi]

Anders Hejlsberg wrote MFC? While working at Borland in 1992? Huh, I never knew that...

Re:A better sponsorship

[dedazo]

Never had a problem with it, it works as advertised. I like my security to be slightly more granular though, which is why I'd rather have ACLs on NT.

This is for internal corporate applications though, irrelevant in the context of where I'd run my blog or picture gallery.

Re:A better sponsorship

[Richard_at_work]

You know, you might want to do some research and rethink your view on the security aspect of IIS and Apache - since version 5, IIS has been impressively secure.

Re:A better sponsorship

[Hairy Heron]

Except a comparison between IIS and Apache is actually analogous while comparing an OS versus a Windowing system is far from analogous.

Re:A better sponsorship

[Foofoobar]

And compared to Apache, it's still lacking. It's only secure in comparison to its HORRIBLE past track record.

Re:A better sponsorship

[bsDaemon]

Neither KDE nor GNOME is a windowing system. However, they are platforms -- and platforms are platforms, so to speak. I could just as easily have said Java vs .NET or something, and I suppose I probably should have -- except its too popular on slashdot to hate both.

Re:A better sponsorship

[kabocox]

Well to use an analogy, if Apache and IIS were car companies, one is manufacturing cars that get 200 MPG, with keyless entry security systems that are highly customizable and can be purchased for $10. The other company makes a car that runs on baby kittens, can be hijacked everytime you go under 30 MPH (and whose top speed is 35 MPH) and can be purchased for $100,000.

Who do you think deserves the market in this case?

The guy that sold a few thousand copies for $100k each. Considering that the other product would have to sell 100K to match the profit in 1 single sale of the other.

O.k. The guy would make far more money if it could sell that $10 one for $100K to a few thousand, but that's always an option to charge them to upgrade to the new improved version.

Re:A better sponsorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot begin to list all the advantages of running IIS+.NET on Server 2003 over [insert language] and mod_whatever on Apache.

Yeah, I can't list any advantages, either.

Re:A better sponsorship

[IntlHarvester]

This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the Apache HTTP server. Apache also does tons of Java stuff.

Re:A better sponsorship

[man_of_mr_e]

Uhh.. no, that's not true at all. Since IIS6 was released in 2003, there hasn't been a single critical security vulnerability in IIS. Not one.

The same can't be said for Apache.

Re:A better sponsorship

[man_of_mr_e]

Uhh.. you really have no idea what you're talking about. First, MFC is a library, C# is a language. Second, C# was developed by Anders Hjelberg, who Microsoft hired away from Borland. He's the guy that basically wrote Delphi. And no, he did not create MFC.

Re:A better sponsorship

[mangu]

Having to muck around with httpd.conf and chmod wouldn't exactly be an improvement over their current stack, especially for intra-corp applications.

Where I work, both approaches are used.

The difference I've seen in the 10+ years since we've had web-based applications in the intranet is that with Apache you must have an experienced analyst who configures httpd.conf once, then the system runs forever. With IIS you must have someone with much less experience, who's always doing this or that to keep the system running.

The consequence is that we have a few very critical systems that run in Apache, while the less important systems run in IIS. We don't keep accounting with enough detail to be sure, but I'd guess the TCO for Apache is much less than for IIS, since so much less attention is needed.

So, you might ask, why not use Apache for everything? The simple answer is that the experienced analysts who take care of the critical systems do not like the kind of stuff that gets relegated to IIS. There are people who do not mind implementing a meeting room reservation system, and there are people who know how to configure Apache, and the two don't mix.

Re:A better sponsorship

[kagaku]

Unfortunately you need to read the manual before you even purchase the car, and the car comes in so many body styles, colors and designs - and every option under the sun. You can even throw in a Model T engine and have it run great.

The car that runs on baby kittens on the otherhand, comes with far fewer options, and these options are all kinda similar (different engine sizes and three or four colors) - but the support is great, everyone has one (so if you don't know something about it, your neighbor might) and the roads were designed with them in mind.

Sometimes it's not about features, it's about the marketing. Microsoft is successful not because they offer the best product, but because most people only know of their product and nothing else. And unfortunately until recently (Ubuntu and similar), Linux just hasn't been close in ease of use. The previously mentioned distros are a great step in the right direction but are still far from being ready for the prime time.

Meanwhile, I'm going to hop in my Aluminum iCar. It only has one button and is maintenance free. Only comes in black or white though, and it costs $150,000 - but hey, that's the price you pay for ease of use sometimes?

Re:A better sponsorship

[cbiltcliffe]

While I agree IIS security has improve dramatically, you might want to do your own research when you claim that there are no critical security vulnerabilities.

http://secunia.com/product/1438/?task=advisories

There are two remote system compromise vulnerabilities listed there.

Re:A better sponsorship

[cbiltcliffe]

Profit potential != deserves the market.

Some of us put things like customer service and social responsibility above profit.

I can take a pirated copy of Windows XP Pro Corporate and sell it for the same price as my competition sells legitimate XP Pro. But of course, I'd make more profit, as I don't have to buy the product. Does that mean I deserve the market more than the competition? Of course not.

Yes, it's an extreme example, but it makes my point.

Re:A better sponsorship

[AshtangiMan]

Well at least the "threw up on the monitor" part was right. I actually really loved MFC when I first was using it, but as time went on I really wished that I had the time to re-do it in some way that read better.

Re:A better sponsorship

[man_of_mr_e]

I wasn't aware of the February vulnerability, but the 2006 vulnerability is not a flaw in IIS, it's a flaw in ASP which is exposed via IIS (because that's really the only way to expose it). It would be like a flaw in mod_perl or something being attributed to IIS. In addition, ASP is not enabled by default, so it's a less critical flaw.

The February vulnerability appears more serious, however, it's still mitigated by the fact that the attacker can only execute code as the worker process, which severely limits things in the default configuration. But still, only one critical vulnerability in 5 years, with that vulnerabilty being only a few months ago?

Re:A better sponsorship

[karmatic]

A lot of us like permissions better than "User, Group, World". That's why a number of file systems support ACLs.

man setfacl is your friend.

Re:A better sponsorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Have u ever heard of ACLs for ext3?

Re:A better sponsorship

[Xest]

Wasn't a massive fan of MFC either if I'm honest but C#? What's wrong with it exactly? combined with the .NET framework it's like Java done right.

If you only have to write for Windows or are happy with the current Mono implementation, C# is one of the best languages out there for application development. It's a modern language, it takes what other older languages did right and fixes many of the things they did wrong.

The .NET framework is easily one of the best frameworks out there also, it's not like stuff running on the CLR is even slow, it's also a pretty efficient language in that respect also.

C# and .NET let you write some very good apps in a lot less code and hence in a much cleaner, tidier way than the vast majority of other languages out there, at least for the Windows platform that is.

Re:A better sponsorship

[cbiltcliffe]

ASP may not be enabled by default, but I highly doubt many people are going to use IIS to serve static pages.

I bet the first thing most IIS administrators do with a new server is to enable ASP.

Yes, it's just a hunch on my part, which may be completely wrong, as I've never worked at a MS-only shop, but it just seems weird to me.

Re:A better sponsorship

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah right, because metabase editing and web.config editing is SOOO much better than httpd.conf, and chmod is obviously deficient compared to clicking on like ACL boxes, right?

Re:A better sponsorship

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the MPG of the second car? What's the top speed of the first car?


I suppose that because the second car cost 100k then it must be able to go at something like 400 MPG but that is only in the 30 MPH zone where as at 35 MPH it goes at 100 MPG.

Re:A better sponsorship

[Fourier404]

Some of us put things like customer service and social responsibility above profit.

I'll give you social responsibility, but the majority of the time, companies only care about customer service because it's good for business, meaning more profit. Only locally owned and operated stores frequently break that rule.

Some might say that social responsibility is only for good public image, but I have enough faith in humanity to assume that there's a large number of corporations run by good people.

Re:A better sponsorship

[Foofoobar]

I think your research must be extremely selective because their have been several from various vendors and several that they don't acknowledge. And Apache hasn't had CRITICAL vulnerabilities while IIS has. And their patch time is averages about 1 week whereas IIS averages 6 months.

Again... not a stellar security track record.

Re:A better sponsorship

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet the first thing most IIS administrators do with a new server is to enable ASP.

Assuming the IIS administrator lives in 1998? Sure.

The first thing they'd do these days in an MS shop is enable ASP.NET. Similar name, different beast altogether.

Re:A better sponsorship

[phoenix.bam!]

You wouldn't blame a php flaw on Apache so why blame an ASP flaw on IIS?

Re:A better sponsorship

[KGIII]

Windows XP Pro Corporate

No, no you can't. Not that this negates anything you said but, really... You can't even buy "Windows XP Pro Corporate" and never could. The "corporate" versions got wrapped into the VLK SKUs after (I think) 2k.

Re:A better sponsorship

[Ant P.]

There is a difference between critical security vulnerabilities, and critical security vulnerabilities made public.

Now for another car analogy:
Suppose I drive by you at 30mph and throw an egg at your face. This egg represents apache. Now, because it splatters open all over your face, you are not yet dead, and you realise something has happened. Now suppose I do a U-turn and come back the other way as you're running up the street yelling at me. This time I hurl an equally-sized rock at your face. This rock represents IIS. Now unfortunately the rock does not yield its contents upon contact with your eyes, so you are left unconscious on the ground in a pool of blood and egg yolk. If you're _very_ lucky someone might tell you what happened when you wake up. More likely than not though you'll just smell funny and be left with brain damage after coming into contact with IIS.

Re:A better sponsorship

[man_of_mr_e]

ASP is not use that much anymore, ASP != ASP.NET. The flaw was in classic ASP.

Re:A better sponsorship

[man_of_mr_e]

Uhh.. what?

http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2006-3747

"allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) and possibly execute arbitrary code via crafted URLs that are not properly handled using certain rewrite rules."

That seems critical to me. Also, while a patch may appear in CVS/SVN within a week, it typically doesn't make it out to the distro users for several weeks afterwards. For instance, this flaw was published on July 6th, but it didn't make it to (for example) Debian until August 1st. http://www.debian.org/security/2006/dsa-1131

I don't really trust the way that apache categorizes their vulnerabilities as they list a DoS attack as critical, but a remote arbitrary code execution flaw as "important". So who knows.

Re:A better sponsorship

[Foofoobar]

Is PHP made by the Apache foundation? Does Apache automatically come BUNDLED with PHP support? Figure those out and you've got your answer to why people blame IIS and not Apache.

Microsoft Support of OSS

[iamhigh]

Could it be that they would like to quit supporting IIS? Make Apache do the dirty webserver stuff, but keep all the content creation in a dll or something. Maybe the 100k is for working on Windows API's and such?

That is the only logical conclusion, as nobody just gives money to the competitor. Right?

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

I know for a fact that's not the case. The IIS team is actually expanding internally and we're preparing another release soon. We're actually interviewing for more people right now.

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

[porkThreeWays]

I don't know if they see it as a replacement so much as IIS/Webservers aren't terribly important to their core business model. IIS is a pretty crappy web server in comparison to... ummm... almost everything else. I think it's more important to Microsoft that people are using .net and Windows servers. If they want to use another web server on Windows w/ .net, so be it. They'll always offer IIS, but they don't fight IIS replacements tooth and nail like they fight Office replacements.

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

[iamhigh]

The IIS team is actually expanding internally

Exactly! They are tired of hiring you people. It would take just a handful of QA guys and a few Apache on Windows experts to utilize Apache for the webserver work. The community would take care of the rest.
Just becuase you are expanding, doesn't mean you are making money, and doesn't mean your safe.

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

[Penguinisto]

I'm not so sure... IIS serves as a tie-in to quite a few different (and damned profitable) Microsoft products... starting with Exchange (for OWA), and branching out a couple thousand different directions from there.

Microsoft's income depends way too heavily on products having exclusive interoperability (e.g. IIS, Exchange, Active Directory...)

Start breaking that up, and enterprises would be more easily liable to start choosing solutions that don't have acronyms like "CAL" anywhere in the invoice.

While yes, IIS is pretty much a money hole for MSFT in a direct sense, they have way too many enterprise products that rely on its existence, and it in turn requires Windows, and only Windows.

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

[iamhigh]

And those enterprise products connect to IIS through COM. Which is perhaps what I should have said instead of API.

So as I said, perhaps this is to get Apache working with Windows COM objects so that they can still have Sharepoint creating content in a compiled application, but the stdout is just changed to html and passed to $webserver.

This is my first conspiracy theory, dammit. Give me a break!

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

[Fozzyuw]

Maybe the 100k is for working on Windows API's and such?

I'd hate to be cynical, but I'm guessing it's just PR. I mean, MS giving $100K? What, did they find it under the sofa in the exectuive lunch room?

That's like selling 3 copies of Vista. =P

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

[Bert64]

They do tho...
Look at the netcraft web server survey over the last few years, microsoft have paid several companies that park thousands of domains in order to increase the market share of IIS.

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's insightful, then I'm Santa Claus!

IIS is a key part of their whole product line:
-they get to sell their Windows Server product line (and CALs) to serve ASP.NET pages -- including a specialized webserver edition
-they get to sell Visual Studio linceses to develop ASP.NET apps, as well as related products (e.g. expression suite)
-they sell a LOT of MS SQL licenses for web servers
-it makes more developers use their .NET platform, and use unified languages for widows development throughout (C#, VB.NET)
-IIS is the underlying part of many important MS apps (sharepoint, certificate authorithy, etc)
-IIS is used to run most intranet servers I've seen
-it's their very platform for web services/WCF and SOA
etc.

IIS is what's keeping an awful lot of us on Windows. Get rid of that, and then there's no reason to run Windows anymore on our servers. That would be suicide for MS.

Office wise, I wouldn't quite say the battle is lost yet, but OOo is quickly getting "good enough" for most people to use.

Long story short, you couldn't be more wrong no matter how hard you tried.

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

[anss123]

IIS is a pretty crappy web server

{{cite needed}}. Not saying it's superior to Apache but having used both I wouldn't call IIS a "crappy web server". Though these days dynamic content is the name of the game so the web server is less important (reduced to more of a front end that passes along the nifty gritty to the PHP/Java/Net/etc back end).

Even media players have built in web servers these days; works with PHP too.

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

[Xest]

Out of interest, what are your specific problems with IIS that make you suggest it's one of, if not the worst web servers out there?

I much prefer Apache, but there are scenarios where IIS is a better choice, and I don't think IIS is any worse than much else other than Apache to be honest.

It's not the IIS of old anymore, it's nowadays pretty decent. Microsoft have certainly cleaned up their act a lot in terms of security and stability of the likes of IIS/SQL server in recent years. ASP.NET is of course a major improvement over classic ASP also and combined the full suite make IIS a pretty attractive option for many applications.

I'd never use IIS to build the next Facebook or anything personally certainly, for really high volume, high profile sites I'd still use Apache but for medium sites requiring high functionality or for intranet based web applications it's still a very good choice. Furthermore with the amount of companies running Windows out there, any negative points in using IIS over Apache are absolutely negligible compared to ease of integration into existing infrastructure and hence the ease of maintaining consistent identity management. The same is true of course on a Linux/Unix based platform with Apache and the likes certainly, but my point is that there are a lot of Windows shops out there and for them IIS is simply the better choice because the benefits of IIS truly do outweigh the benefits of Apache in many circumstances.

Again, I know praising Microsoft or their products is a touchy subject here on Slashdot and again Apache is still my favourite but I think it's rather foolish to blindly dismiss IIS with the suggestion it's one of the worst web servers there is nowadays.

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

[shutdown -p now]

IIS is a pretty crappy web server in comparison to... ummm... almost everything else.

Right. It's probably why it has on occasion taken more than half of positions in the Netcraft top 10, and there is always at least one IIS server in there somewhere.

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

[shutdown -p now]

Not really. They probably just want you to come and buy Windows Server from them even if you decide to use Apache rather than IIS. You'll still get IIS installed with Windows, so if you'll ever be tempted to use any of Microsoft's IIS-specific solutions, the platform is already there.

Where is the ship?

[ancientt]

Okay, I have to admit this confuses me. There are a lot of possibilities where MS could make investments or try to push markets, but this seems business backwards. I can't tell if it is a magic trick or the real thing.

And for the subject reference:

A magician works on a cruise ship and entertains the audience with his show. The only problem is that the captainâ(TM)s parrot has figured out all his tricks and tells them during the show. âoeAaarrr, itâ(TM)s in his sleeve, itâ(TM)s in his sleeve, Aaarrrâ âoeAaarrr, itâ(TM)s under his hat, itâ(TM)s under his hat, Aaarrrâ

One night the parrot starts again to tell trick. The magician pulls out a gun and shoots at the parrot. The parrot dodged the bullet; it hit a propane tank and blew the ship into a million pieces. The only two survivors are the magician and the parrot floating on a piece of wood in the middle of the ocean.

The parrot looks around, looks at the magician and say: âoeAaarrr, ok, you got me. Where is the ship?â

Re:Where is the ship?

[FooAtWFU]

Congratulations. You're not only incoherent, you've obviously copy-and-pasted "smart quotes" that came out of Microsoft Word somewhere. Ick.

Re:Where is the ship?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd quote your post, but you've trademarked too many parts of it and I don't want to be sued.

Re:Where is the ship?

[ancientt]

Worse, copied and pasted off some random website.

As for incoherent, well, probably, the news left me befuddled at best.

Re:Where is the ship?

[ancientt]

Oh, do feel free. Promises not to sue, just like MS, I give freely. Probably a little less scary when I do it though.

I really did think my meaning was a little more transparent than the mods seemed to think though. Once off topic though, why not explain the joke to death right? First, it should be noted that my assumption is that MS is up to something, some sort of dark magic, which is not clear. Typically when they squash competition, I see the trick, thus the "up his sleeve" or "in his hat" relevance. Second, as the parrot, I fear that MS has done something rash, in the rush to quash the competition of OSS, I suspect they decided to join the ranks of contributors, thus making their image seem a little less evil. I call it rash because I don't think that, despite statements to the contrary, they really understand that OSS isn't some marketing gimmick and think they can woo the masses with cash. I think it will come back and, well, sink their ship. I thought of the joke, an old one, because I felt like the parrot watching the MS magician do some extrodinary trick, slowly coming to the realization that it really might not accomplish the usual sleight of hand but have terrible (from their perspective) consequences in the end.

I didn't notice the weird character representation in the preview, but didn't bother to correct the error since I figured that quoting a parrot, it would do just as well for sounds that don't have ascii representations.

I do have a new theory though. I don't know the details, but my guess is that somebody lost a bet, and it went something like this:
Scene: Balmer and IIS department head are on a golf course
Balmer: "Okay, if I miss this putt, I'll give you my jaguar, but if I make it, your department has to donate $100,000 annually to Apache."
Smuckly: "Seriously? Okay, but only after Gates is retired okay?"
Balmer sinks the putt with an evil smile while Smuckly turns a little green.

How to interpret this.

[jskline]

Based on Ballmers history, I'd say this is inroads by which to "divide and conquer". So; with the check, what was on the document saying what they wanted in return. Microsoft never gives anything away and usually takes everything it wants?

Re:How to interpret this.

[Rgb465]

So; with the check, what was on the document saying what they wanted in return.

It was in Italian. Loosely translated it said "Apache may someday be called upon to return the favor".

Re:How to interpret this.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is, fund some MS product when MS will eventually run out money :-)

Re:How to interpret this.

[angrykeyboarder]

Microsoft gives all kinds of stuff away (examples include this and this).

Re:How to interpret this.

[jskline]

The word "Partner" usually has the connotation that money has exchanged hands between parties. When ever Microsoft "partners" with governments, communities, organizations and such, is because there is a business relationship in there somewhere that just; wasn't mentioned. If they are using Windows computers, they probably got a sweet deal on them, or they paid full price for them in order to receive "grants" for a program they are running as a non-profit, etc.

That other thing; wix, I don't see much use of that anywhere. It's a cross platform installer of some kind. Hmm... I don't know of any Microsoft code that can cross compile on anything but; oh wait; Windows server vs Windows XP, vs Windows vista. Oh; that cross compile. Can you point to somewhere it's in use?

It begins

[RockMFR]

Embrace

Re:It begins

[RingDev]

If it gets .Net and Silverlight support to Apache, Embrace away!

-Rick

Re:It begins

[unity100]

if this is what .Net and Silverlight to get recognition, forget it.

a language/framework that is not competitive enough to be recognized by itself will be ok if there is broader support for it ? dont think so.

Re:It begins

[RingDev]

So you are saying we should scratch PHP, Ruby, and Pearl off as well because they don't have nearly the penetration or recognition of .Net?

Silverlight 2* is still pretty low-key, but it's in Beta (a real beta, not the "this thing isn't ever going to leave beta" definition that Google likes to use). But I keep hearing more and more bounce back from developers, and the head hunters are starting to pick up on it too. When SL2 is released, it's going to rally up some decent press, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if MS's goal here is to push for SL support on Apache.

-Rick

*Silverlight 1/1.1 is in production, but it was create more as a feasibility study, the attention it drew was sufficient to motivate MS into doing a full managed code version: Silverlight 2. And it is on its way to becoming quite a nice product!

Re:It begins

[unity100]

So you are saying we should scratch PHP, Ruby, and Pearl off as well because they don't have nearly the penetration or recognition of .Net?

excuse me, but if you say this, i have no option but laughing over it with my ass. i dont know any decent way to put it. youre totally unaware of what the web is built with.

silverlight 2 ? what is silverlight ?

Re:It begins

[RingDev]

excuse me, but if you say this, i have no option but laughing over it with my ass. i dont know any decent way to put it. youre totally unaware of what the web is built with.

Okay, so it was a slight hyperbole ;) The combined presence of VB.Net/C#/ASP.Net and the rest of the .Net language does by most measures, out weigh PHP, Ruby, or Pearl individually in terms of distribution and use. But it's all arm chair statistics anyway, change the metrics and you can easily show any single element out performing any other single element.

The point, hyperbole aside, still stands. Do you feel that if a product is of lesser popularity, it should be forsaken in favor of the market leader?

Should MS drop the idea of Silverlight all together because you can do much of the same functionality with a combination of javascript and flash, and that is currently the most popular way to fulfill that functionality?

Should MS drop IIS all together because Apache is the market leader?

Should Mozilla just pack it up and go home because IE is the market leader?

Should all of the Linux distro call it quits because Windows is the market leader?

In all cases, the answer is NO. A wide variety of tools, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, gives us the best opportunity to pick the correct one for any given situation. If, by investing in the Apache community, MS manages to get better .Net and Silverlight functionality on Apache, it gives us yet another option for tools to use.

I'm failing to see how this would be a bad thing(tm). MS gets their tools on another plat form, the Apache community gets a free lunch, so to say, and us developers get more options. Like I said above, so long as MS's "contributions" to Apache do not result in closed source code, I'm all for it.

-Rick

Re:It begins

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhhh, nothing is cuter than an inflamed zealot pretending to have a valid point.

Re:It begins

[unity100]

Okay, so it was a slight hyperbole ;) The combined presence of VB.Net/C#/ASP.Net and the rest of the .Net language does by most measures, out weigh PHP, Ruby, or Pearl individually in terms of distribution and use. But it's all arm chair statistics anyway, change the metrics and you can easily show any single element out performing any other single element.

no, they dont.

do you know how many millions of websites use php on shared hosting ? as opposed to asp servers being generally standalone, serving only one site ? this example should by itself be enough to draw a picture. im not even gonna go into what perl means for linux.

The point, hyperbole aside, still stands. Do you feel that if a product is of lesser popularity, it should be forsaken in favor of the market leader?

the popular is decided by the market itself. php did not became popular because some big buck company pushed it through various means. or spent big marketing cash on it.

no one is saying that anyone should drop their own brainchild. what is being said here is that noone should try to push stuff that has not been getting any kind of preference by the community.

Re:It begins

[gbjbaanb]

1. believe me, PHP by itself runs on more webservers and sites than all the .NET languages put together. Probably more than .NET languages and ASP/classic too!

Netcraft stats for PHP - over 20 million sites a year ago. According to the same Netcraft survey, IIS itself only runs 20 million sites, so unless *every* IIS site ran ASP (note: these stats are from Aug 2007, so they'd all be classic ASP) PHP would *still* be running on more active sites.
There's more stats available for the current month.

2. Silverlight is a client-side technology. IIS/apache doesn't come into it. A silverlight discussion would be MS supporting it on Firefox on Linux.

3. MS is the market leader only in certain segments of the IT marketplace. For webserving, Apache has been dominant for, well, since forever. MS is catchign up as they provide 'incentives' for some providers - eg Myspace, GoDaddy etc, which you'll see on the netcraft stats.

4. The problem is that you'd never get .NET on Linux, which is Apache's native platform. Though Apache runs on Windows I guess MS may be trying to get developers to program in .NET using Apache and they be as locked in to Windows server platform as if they had stuck with IIS. I think this is the goal for this sponsorship.

To answer your question - should MS drop Silverlight because you can do the same in Javascript and Flash (Flex), then the answer is no. Should *you* drop Silverlight because you can do the same in a free technology on any platform you choose, then the pragmatic answer is probably yes. Simply, if you stick with C# then you're stuck with Windows. If you choose PHP then you can choose any platform you like.

Re:It begins

[RingDev]

1. believe me, PHP by itself runs on more webservers and sites than all the .NET languages put together. Probably more than .NET languages and ASP/classic too!

As I stated, change the metrics and you can get what ever answer you like. Open the poll to all applications, not just web sites, and .Net (especially if you combine ASP/classic stuff too) pushes even better. Limit it back to Open Source projects, and the MS tools drop significantly. Look at closed source solutions, and MS dominates. Like I said, you can look at any specific segment of the programming world and see a skew.

2. Silverlight is a client-side technology. IIS/apache doesn't come into it. A silverlight discussion would be MS supporting it on Firefox on Linux.

I actually do all of my silverlight development using Firefox. ;) But what would be nice is WCF/ASP.Net server side on Apache, I should have clarified on that in my initial post, but Silverlight is way more entertaining to talk about ;)

3. MS is the market leader only in certain segments of the IT marketplace. For webserving, Apache has been dominant for, well, since forever. MS is catchign up as they provide 'incentives' for some providers - eg Myspace, GoDaddy etc, which you'll see on the netcraft stats.

Very true! But MS/IIS has some great tools and features that Apache is lacking, namely, ease of configuration and maintenance. Apache has improved a lot over the years, and I still prefer it for it's stability and scalability. But honestly, the IIS server I've been working off of for the last year and a half hasn't given me a single issue. And I love the fact that MS's drive to make inroads in the web serving market is forcing them to improve IIS. Just as Apple's resurgence in the PC realm is forcing them to improve Windows (even if Vista missed the mark).

4. The problem is that you'd never get .NET on Linux, which is Apache's native platform. Though Apache runs on Windows I guess MS may be trying to get developers to program in .NET using Apache and they be as locked in to Windows server platform as if they had stuck with IIS. I think this is the goal for this sponsorship.

Actually, there is the Mono project, which seems to be getting a decent bit of positive attention from MS. And there is also the Moonlight project, which is aiming to bring Silverlight to Linux as well, although I'm not of it's state or scope.

If you choose PHP then you can choose any platform you like.

I like PHP, it's a handy language for putting together websites and CMS sites. Would I use it to create a web based desktop application? not a chance. Same for Javascript/Flash, a great combination, and it makes some tasks impressively simple, but it falls flat on it's face for more complex systems. Sure, you could develop significant applications using it, but it would be a nightmere (IMO) to maintain. Silverlight is also not a cure-all invention, but it does give me access to a solid vector based graphics system, an amazing multi-media library, a huge portion of the .Net library, and integrated support for ASP.Net web services. It is no where near as refined as the desktop environment, but for a beta product, it's not bad. And the Beta 2 release added a lot of the tools and refinements that Beta 1 was missing. If they continue on their current path, the production release will be something pretty impressive.

Oh yeah, I drank that coolaide. But I'll keep browsing in FF, writing in Open Office, and a copy of Sharp Dev handy just incase MS tries to screw me ;)

-Rick

Re:It begins

[SEE]

I imagine most things are bigger deals on the Web than DIN 66253-2. You might have somewhat more credibility on the issue if you correctly spelled the name of Larry Wall's language.

Re:It begins

[Shados]

Silverlight 2 was actually first, amusingly enough. It was called WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere), and was the original design behind silverlight. Since it was still some time before it could be ready, they pushed a gimped version, Silverlight 1, to start and gain mindshare. But MS didn't need to be motivated to make a managed version: it was the -original- intention. (Since XBAP applications, the "full" deal that has been around since .NET 3.0, is Windows only)

It's nice

[Kingston]

to see Microsoft embracing Apache, oh no, wait a minute I know how this is going ....

Apache 2.4

[Ynot_82]

Apache 2.4 release notes
new modules:
mod_drm
mod_ooxml
mod_reject-firefox

Re:Apache 2.4

[xtracto]

hey! you forgot the most important

mod_bsod
mod_clippy

Re:Apache 2.4

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about these as well

mod_sell-soul
mod_fuck-fork

and my favorite:

mod_resistance-is-futile

salt

[Iceykitsune]

take this with an Everest sized pile of salt!

Developer, developer, developer....!

[judethecutedude]

Steve Ballmer is either:
1) Trying to appear more "open" (what with all the lawsuits in Europe & the oh-so-enthusiastic reception of OOXML), so they can have more influence in the real standards body.
2) Simply trying that old trick (to pretend suck up to developers) & then turn around & do something else.

Eitherway, its a PR stunt because it's hard to believe Microsoft wants to change its definition of "industry standards" from "something we came up with" to---wait for it---"industry standards". Unless I'm missing something

Re:Developer, developer, developer....!

[gbjbaanb]

Oh no, they're sucking up to developers all right... "hey kids, come and have a play with this cool new toy, yes the Express version is totally free... and you can do so much stuff with it, just look how it does most of it for you, no you don't have to think too hard about your programming, just let the nice IDE suck your bra... um, help you work smarter, not harder. Yes, you'll need to buy more RAM, but its cheap nowadays. Now, look at the nice client tools included too, yes, you can have animated icons on your buttons isn't that cool, yes so you'll work with Uncle MS's technology now, and you won't be able to leave ever again... mouhahahahahahaha".

Managed code, pah. Managing to break all the old stuff more like.

Re:Developer, developer, developer....!

[angrykeyboarder]

So then I take it you're not fond of Anjuta, Eclipse or KDevelop?

Ill summarize the response of broader community :

[unity100]

Suspicious, wary.

and rightly so too. look at what happened to all those who got affiliated with microsoft in any way.

microsoft has huge negative karma to alleviate.

hahahaa mod parent +5 funny

[unity100]

pls. you know its very funny, even if youre a microsoft fanboi.

You could point to it instead.

[twitter]

See this warning about divide and conquer. M$ has not brought much to the table. In return their marketing department is going to pretend there is community support for OOXML and other proprietary formats.

The broader M$ goal is to have people pay M$ if they want to use free software. They want you to use Windoze and taxed versions of GNU/Linux. Until they shut up about patents it is best to have nothing to do with them.

Re:You could point to it instead.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how to tell you this man... but if I may, the repeated use of M$ in your posts makes you look like a moron, which I'm sure you're not (well, I hope).

Just a thought.

Re:You could point to it instead.

[snoyberg]

I don't know how to tell you this man... but if I may, the repeated use of M$ in your posts makes you look like a moron, which I'm sure you're not (well, I hope).

Just a thought.

You must be new here.... (Note: GP is Twitter)

Re:You could point to it instead.

[The End Of Days]

Really dude, just relax a little. The frothy unrelated bullshit you persist on spewing into every story is really old.

Re:You could point to it instead.

[unity100]

"old" does not mean that the idea is discarded.

Re:You could point to it instead.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not all that makes him look like a moron. There's also citing boycottnovell. Most of the stories on that site are not verifiable--the references usually just link to other boycottnovell stories, which link to still other stories at the site. When you finally find one that links off, it usually doesn't support the claim the site is citing it for.

Re:You could point to it instead.

[angrykeyboarder]

This whole "M$" thing got old 10 years ago.

It's not only dated, it's just childish.

Boycott Apache!

[andrewd18]

Apache has sold out. We must fork their code now and abandon their Microsoft-backed versions, no matter what the cost. Look at what Microsoft did to Novell and openSUSE - the same thing is going to happen to Apache. Tell everyone you know to stop using Microsoft-backed products. Friends don't let friends use Apache.

Re:Boycott Apache!

[andrewd18]

I find it very funny that I've been modded down as a Troll for that comment, but if I had made a similar comment about Novell, I'd be modded +5 Insightful.

Re:Boycott Apache!

[angrykeyboarder]

Look at what Microsoft did to Novell and openSUSE

And what exactly have they done?

openSUSE is the same as it's always been. In fact it keeps getting better.

To push for wider adoption of M$ standards

[BhaKi]

TFA says:

He believes that this move is based on a legitimate desire by Microsoft to foster collaborative development of Apache technologies that implement Microsoft standards.

If that's true, then we have a grave situation. M$ can make apache compatible with M$'s home-grown standards and then claim that the standards themselves are open standards. Since the percentage of IT people who mistake an open-source implementation as an open standard is almost 100%, M$ can even be very successful at this. Since the standards themselves are not open, all web servers, except Apache and M$-IIS, will soon die out. Finally M$ withdraws support for Apache and thus giving it a final blow. Now M$-IIS becomes the king. I know that I'm sounding like a conspiracy theorist. But we have seen enough instances of this Embrace-Extend-Extinguish policy.

Re:To push for wider adoption of M$ standards

[FlyingBishop]

The trouble with that is, if they make Apache fully compatible with the rest of their stack, they would have to break compatibility between IIS and the rest of their software in order to break compatibility with Apache.

Which of course would be a stupid move, you'd just get the current situation where XP does exactly what people want, with no configuration, and Vista is a pain in the ass to switch to. Except this would be a matter of not wanting to switch from MS's next server release to a hypothetical release after that one.

That said, this announcement isn't really that big a shift. They've just decided that if they're not going to open up everything, there's no need to be douchebags with a ton of doublespeak about things which no one wants to use anyway: they'll only piss us of. However, you'll note the conspicuous absence of Silverlight, as well as WMA. In fact, it seems the only thing's they're opening up are things that are shameless rip-offs of actual open standards. So they don't really need to pull any further slight of hand, they already have.

Resistance Is Futile

[Anonymous Coward]

All your software are belong to us

Competitor is 'your' perspective

[Nymz]

Microsoft may have a different perspective based on their judgement of the enviroment, and whether it's a Zero-Sum Game or not.

Non Zero-Sum Game = contribute to everyone; grow entire pie; so your own little percentage yields a high profit.
Zero-Sum Game = control hardware, software, and even services; shrink entire pie; so that you own a large piece that yields more profit relative to others' profit.

If you believe contributing to Appache would be good for everyone, and hence good for you, then you support them. (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo)
If you believe contributing to Appache would be good for everyone, and hence not good for you, then you don't support them. (Apple)

What do you get crossing Microsoft & Apache?

[bugnuts]

Q: What do you get when you cross Microsoft and Apache?

A: Microsoft.

Novell Deja Vu?

[The_PHP_Jedi]

I really wouldn't mind having better ASP support on Apache (that doesn't hurt anyone), but this talk about "interoperability" between Microsoft and the ASF just brings back into my memory what happened to Novell.

The Apache Software Foundation /HAS/ (triple emphasis!) to keep their usual levels of strictness when it comes to outside contributors, specially Microsoft in this case.

I hope they don't let their guard down. I'm quite concerned, honestly. I do have some hope that the ASF will handle this properly, and not let such a great project succumb to Corporate America.

Infection complete?

[davburns]

When I heard about this at OSCON, I had the same disbelief as anyone on slashdot. But then I thought.. what if it's true? What if MSFT isn't going to fold up and die a relic of the days of propriatry software? I wanted to see that, and I'm sure I'm not alone. But they have new management and can see how the software world is shifting just like everyone else. The "enemy" might be infected with "good", and we might get a powerful new ally instead of a vanquished foe. (What if this happend to the MPAA?)

But for now, I'm going to watch out for boar aviators and do what I can to slow the pace of infernal cooling.

spot on !!!

[unity100]

M$ has not brought much to the table. In return their marketing department is going to pretend there is community support for OOXML and other proprietary formats.

thats probably the thing they are going for.

Investor support

[HalAtWork]

So why will their investors support this move?

Re:Investor support

[gbjbaanb]

maybe Yahoo runs on Apache? :-)

POSIX ACLs are crap

[slittle]

A lot of us like permissions better than "Read, Write, Execute". Also, ACLs without dynamic inheritance are a nightmare waiting to happen. And lastly, userspace support for ACLs is still woeful on *nix - while getfacl/setfacl work well enough, GUI support is poor, archiver support is thin at best and many end-user apps still think it's OK to meddle with your permissions and inevitably screw it up because they only copy your permissions, not your ACLs (this happens more than you might expect, even word processors do it).

I strongly advise not using ACLs on Linux unless you're really sure they're the only option you have to get the results you want (and then make sure your intended results are worth the penalty). On Windows, use them as much as possible because runas is a piss-poor substitute for su/sudo.

Incidentally, this is the same reason you shouldn't use symlinks (junctions) on Windows unless you're really sure. While it's technically supported at the low level, the upper levels are basically oblivious and will carry on as though they were normal files and therefore fuck your system up one way or another (such as getting lost in a loop, backing up the same files multiple times, crossing filesystems, etc.).

Netcraft confirms it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apache is dying. Seriously, I'm considering dumping Apache in the future. It's a matter about trust. I simply cannot trust MS.

Re:Netcraft confirms it.

[angrykeyboarder]

I simply cannot trust MS.

That's too bad.

I love Open Source. I use a lot of Open Source software in Windows. And not only that, I run Linux as well (more often than Windows in fact).

Microsoft has a lot of good people working in Open Source.

I'm not saying MS has not been bad because they most certainly have. But that doesn't mean things aren't changing.

Microsoft is learning that participating in Open Source will benefit everyone, including Microsoft.

No, we won't see Windows under released under an Open Source license, but that doesn't preclued MS from contributing to Open Source software.

Despite what the big hairy guy says, there is room in this world for both open and "closed" source software.