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Microsoft Launches Free Web Software Eco-System

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the and-i'm-sure-it-will-be-bug-and-bloat-free dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft, inspired perhaps by the ease of selecting and installing iPhone apps, has taken a similar approach to gather back market share of its IIS web server in a predominantly Apache/PHP market. 10 open source CMS, gallery, wiki, and blog tools were chosen to populate the eco-system, dubbed Web App Gallery. Developers must agree to principles and can now submit their PHP or .NET application for inclusion. Once an application is in the gallery, Windows users use Microsoft Web Platform Installer, released in a keynote at MIX this week, which inspects the the local system, and installs and configures dependencies like the IIS webserver, PHP, URL re-writers, and file permissions. Screenshots show this to be quite easy for the typical computer user. This could provide some real competition for WAMP and Linux shell install processes."

14 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. But... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Does it run Linux?

  2. Microsoft and what? by Kickboy12 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's not every day you see "Microsoft" and "Free" in the same headline.

    You think this is a sign Microsoft is legitimately trying to reach out to the web community? Or is this just another attempt to grab server market share from Apache and the Linux community?

    Generally, I think the last thing the web needs is more servers running IIS.

    --
    google.slashdot
    1. Re:Microsoft and what? by qoncept · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You think this is a sign Microsoft is legitimately trying to reach out to the web community? Or is this just another attempt to grab server market share from Apache and the Linux community?

      Um.. what's the difference? One thing I can promise you is that Microsoft, like any other company, does what it feels is in its best interest. ie, they aren't trying to do anyone a favor here, they're trying to make more money.

      --
      Whale
    2. Re:Microsoft and what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's not every day you see "Microsoft" and "Free" in the same headline.

      Nonsense

    3. Re:Microsoft and what? by Andr+T. · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's not every day you see "Microsoft" and "Free" in the same headline.

      Search for 'Microsoft' in google. One of the top results will be "Microsoft - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia"

      --

      Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.

    4. Re:Microsoft and what? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You'll notice, "free" applies to other people's software. Microsoft, ever infinitely gracious, deigns to allow you to give your software away so that they can sell more of theirs.

      Nobody should be surprised by a move like this. Web applications, CMSes and the like, are complementary goods to web servers and OSes. Everybody wants goods complementary to their own products to be cheaper, so as to drive demand. This isn't some sort of philosophical revolution, just Econ 101 + self interest on MS's part.

    5. Re:Microsoft and what? by gbjbaanb · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Of course with both WAMP and XAMPP taking about three minutes to install I'm not sure that will work

      Ah but it will, Microsoft developers don't tend to look outside the box to see if there's anything else out there - they generally assume that MS provides all they would ever need, and if MS doesn't provide it, its either not available at all, or they never needed it anyway.

      This is why this will succeed, the MS blogs and communities will pick up on it and suddenly they'll think its the best thing ever. I doubt they'll actually use much PHP, that's just the teaser to pre-populate the site with apps, they'll all get taken over with ASP.NET MVC stuff before too long -the MS crowd just don't like to install 'foreign' stuff like PHP when they will think nothing of installing over a gig of .net framework to start playing with C#.

      So - I don't know if it'll work well either.

    6. Re:Microsoft and what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not every day you see "Microsoft" and "Free" in the same headline.

      Not "free" as in beer, "free" as in cheese in a mousetrap...

  3. Big deal. by Red+Flayer · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Microsoft, inspired[1] perhaps by the ease of selecting and installing iPhone apps, has taken a similar approach to gather back market share of its IIS web server in a predominantly Apache/PHP market. 10 open source[2] CMS, gallery, wiki, and blog tools were chosen to populate the eco-system, dubbed Web App Gallery.

    [1] I think submitter mis-spelled "feeling threatened".

    [2] Big deal. Two open source tools? How many closed-source tools are in the "ecosystem"?

    --
    "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
  4. Not needed for server apps by saibot834 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Servers are maintained by people who are not computer newbies and need a GUI. Normally they know how to handle a shell.
    Extremely ease install routines for server applications suggest that maintaining a server and keeping it secure is a trivial task, just like clicking those shiny "install" buttons. This is not the case, and you better know how to keep your server save if you run it on the web, especially if you make the somewhat disturbing choice to run it under Windows.

    1. Re:Not needed for server apps by rackserverdeals · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There are plenty of people with servers out there that don't know what they're doing and couldn't restart a service if their control panel software got hosed.

      --
      Dual Opteron < $600
    2. Re:Not needed for server apps by MeanMF · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That may be true for larger sites, but there's a huge market for low-cost, turnkey web hosting usually fronted with cPanel or Plesk. Microsoft wants to get into that market.

  5. Yeah, The App Store by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft, inspired perhaps by the ease of selecting and installing iPhone apps

    Yup. Cuz nobody's every thought about a package manager before. Especially not one with a nice, GUI front end.

    Hey, maybe Microsoft will adopt something similar for the Xbox 360. You know, to make it easier to download add-ons, small games, videos, and so on. They could call it, I don't know, Xbox Live Marketplace or something. Too bad it's too late for them to have done it for the Xbox. Real shame that.

    --
    Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
  6. Re:Great, another PHPNuke and Wordpress by tearmeapart · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...and I think the others are usually a lot easier to install. Microsoft's takes at least 5 steps (with steps like 1. "Download, Configure, Install MySQL").

    Meanwhile, on many other systems, it is a lot less work:
    Ubuntu:
    1. In the Programs menu, click "Add/Remove"
    2. Select the CMS (or whatever) that you want, and click "Install"
    3. Enjoy.

    Other debian systems:
    1. apt-get install my-favourite-cms

    Freebsd:
    1. cd /usr/ports/www/my-favourite-cms; make install

    And finally, a quick comparison between this new Microsoft way and the usual ways with GNU Linux/BSD:
    Installing is easier with GNU Linux/BSD
    Configuration is easier with GNU Linux/BSD
    Support is generally more available with GNU Linux/BSD
    Writing plugins is generally a whole lot easier with GNU Linux/BSD because the code is available

    Especially with the new tools available, I believe IIS deserves to die.