G-WAN, Another Free Web Server

mssmss writes "Has anyone used G-WAN — a free (as in beer), supposedly fast and scalable Web server? The downside is it supports only C scripts, which the author claims is a plus since most programmers know C anyway. There is currently only a Windows release and no clear answer in their FAQs whether there would be Linux/Solaris releases. As an interesting aside, releasing a Web server while at the same time fighting a losing battle (PDF) with a large bank over a piracy claim of $200 million (the bank is alleged to have done the piracy) is quite a feat."

Comments

Value?

[mcrbids]

Where's the value/point in releasing another limited-utility webserver?

I see the point in having a few options for a particular category, so that you can choose between different optimizations for things like cost, performance, and compatibility. But why something of limited utility (only runs C scripts) compatibility (only runs on 'doze) AND cost? (not OSS, but it's free!)

I don't know. Even with a fairly "heavy" web server such as Apache, the performance increases by going with another "lighter" platform seldom represent more than a year or so of hardware advance.

So.... Why?

Spite?

[innocent_white_lamb]

It looks like this chap has a grudge against Microsoft (he says his company was "eradicated from the market the usual way", apparently by Microsoft) so he wrote this webserver to hit them "where it hurts".
 
I don't know if spite is the best motivation to write excellent software.

Re:Spite?

[tobiasly]

Not just against Microsoft, this guy just seems to be full of piss and vinegar in general. Every entry in his blog is a rant against something, whether it's Microsoft, the world economy, the Western Hemisphere, or those stealthy, mysterious corporate hacker ninjas who spend every waking hour trying to take down his ironclad website due to the obvious danger he poses to The Man.

Even the software's FAQ takes cheap shots at the objects of his vast paranoia. Stay far, far away from anyone with that big a chip on their shoulder.

Re:Big Plus!

[onefriedrice]

Absolutely. What makes me especially excited about trying G-WAN is that whenever it crashes I'll have the extra fun of figuring out whether the reason it crashed was because my own C code crashed, or because the code in his web server crashed.

Finding where a program crashed is way easier than finding a logic error, and those can occur in any language. Actually, debugging crashes can lead to discovery of certain kinds of logic and/or runtime errors that would be difficult to find if your runtime environment is protecting you from ever seeing a crash (heaven forbid).

I'm as much a fan of high-level languages, nice runtime environments, and useful abstractions as anyone, but I also happen to think that C gets more flak than it deserves. I really think universities are doing their graduates a disservice by educating them in the safe, comfortable confines of Java if they don't also teach them C. In my own subjective experience, the most capable and successful programmers I know (in any environment) are also the ones who are very comfortable in environments without garbage collection and restricted memory access.