Slashdot Mirror
Ballmer: Apache is simply better
Armin writes "Microsoft's
Steve Ballmer praised the Apache Webserver in a key note this weekend in Austria.
Article is in German, use babelfish."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Use babelfish.altavista.com. The link given to babelfish.digital.com didn't work for me.
It's generally been agreeded upon in the Linux community that part of the reason Linux scored so low in the Mindcraft benchmarks was due to performance problems with Apache. By openly praising Apache, MS is attempting to point a finger of blame back at Linux.
MS doesn't do anything, or say anything, without the motive to promote their position in the market and/or spread FUD about their competitors.
Ballmer is not saying Apache is better. He is saying Apache is better to host multiple web sites on a single physical machine. If you look at the market and the next push, that aspect is irrelevant.
He did not say Apache was faster nor did he say Apache had more features. This he will never say because that would actually admit IIS does not work as well.
Why is he doing double talk? Simple think in context of DOJ. The judge in the DOJ case cannot distinguish the difference in what makes a best server. All the judge sees is competition. So to the judge there is competition and no case.
(I read the court proceedings and have to say that they could have nailed MS's butt to the wall if they were more technically savy)
And lets not forget, what does Ballmer do in Microsoft? Marketing!!! Bill G is good, but the real marketing brain is Ballmer!!!! So he would never admit such a thing without an ulterior motive.
Also, if I am not mistaken, Germany already _legally_ _requires_ government-funded computers to be Windows boxes. Germany is perhaps the safest place for Ballmer to be making such statements, because the government already outlaws Linux, Macs, OS2 etc with regard to 'what the government is literally paying for'. If this is in error please correct it. It is not illegal to own a Mac or run Linux in Germany: you simply cannot get one by government subsidy, if you are working for the government or getting an education grant there is only Windows.
IMO, NOT a good idea at all. A server daemon should remain in user-space...accessing kernel-space from say, a webserver, could be a security nightmare waiting to happen.
As far as speed goes, what's the price you're willing to pay for that speed boost IIS appears to offer over Apache? Frequent reboots and the inability to handle high loads sort of tip the scale in Apache's favor, not to mention that IIS is inseparably tied to ONE underlying OS.
Posted by wnp:
Actually, before anyone gets their pants (or
something else) all in knots, let me make this
clear:
Ballmer said Apache was better than IIS "in hosting more than one site on a single computer",
i.e. as a virtual server.
That's ALL he said, he didn't say it was generally
better.
Here is a possible translation of the German text:
:)
Today Microsoft President Steven Ballmer admitted something the most Windows users already know.
"All of our products are shite, we know that but quite frankly we don't care. We have a monopoly and our customers are stupid, they are trapped on our platform and have to use what we give them. It doesn't matter that products like Apache are better than ours. If some one creates a better product we just bundle our inferior one with the next upgrade that they are forced to install. We know most people are lazy and will not bother to download and install a better product if one comes with the system."
Please note, I don't speak or read German, but I can read between the lines and that's what I saw there
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
This is, of course, why Microsoft use Apache on an open-source operating system ( FreeBSD) on their massive Hotmail cluster. You can verify that here. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is pushing these servers to their limits in a production environment. When it comes down to it, the key issues are flexibility and reliability, and there you'll find that Apache is the market leader for a very good reason.
Eines der erklärten Anliegen Microsofts in Europa ist es, "die Regierungen zu ermutigen, das schwedische Modell zu prüfen."
So what is this "Swedish model" that Microsoft is pushing?
Die schwedische Regierung bietet seit 1996 zusammen mit Hard- und Softwareproduzenten [HP, Microsoft] sowie InternetProvidern komplette EinsteigerPakete angeboten, die den Gesamtanteil an PCs innerhalb kurzer Zeit signifikant gehoben hatte.
Uh oh, but then Mr. Ballmer is pushing a regulatory actions of states, which pushes the warez of specific vendors, in casu Microsoft. I wonder if Mr. Ballmer knows that his collegues think the US government is doing something similar for Netscape - and how they feel about this.
Ballmer "expects" StarDivision to disappear, thereby of course further driving the market in Office suites towards total domination by Microsoft.
OEM's can license StarOffice far cheaper than MS Office and many Linux users such as myself have discovered that StarOffice allows them to do everything they wish an Office suite to do - which is often merely reading their managers' documents or providing simple documents themselves.
Naturally, Mr. Ballmer would gladly see a package with such price/performance marks disappear so he "predicts" that this will indeed happen. He effectively tells potential customers to focus on the ability of StarDivision to withstand Microsoft's market power, rather than on product quality.
Aside from stimulating pro-Microsoft regulation and spreading FUD, Ballmer's method to take in government leaders clearly consists of flattering them: "Viktor Klima kommt ja aus der Programmierer-Ecke. Ich glaube, wir werden in Österreich auf offene Ohren stossen."
-cjr
In the classic market model, when competition is recognized then prices drop.
Has MS lowered the price of IIS recently?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Apache's configuration/setup totally blows. Who in thier right mind would want to use some external program ( nasty text editor ) to configure a webserver with?
Of course. You're absolutely right. We should all give up our "nasty text editors" and use Wizards. After all, an M$ program would know more about optimizing performance than a trained professional, right?
IIS is way much easier to setup and maintane. It seems to be faster on my dual PII than apache does as well.
If it's faster for you, good for you. But please don't assume that we're all mindless M$ drones who are incabable of actually thinking.
my take is that raw speed is a bit of a red herring. 5% more or less in speed won't let you use the same box for much longer, if your site grows; in other words, you don't want to be within 5% or 10% of your machine's max throughput. so if it's too much for a single server, yes, install several ones, whether it's Apache or IIS, Linux or FreeBSD or Solaris or Tru64 or NT. Just give them each one IP, and several A records for your www.whatever.com hostname, and make them all access the same DB server if there's a DB. btw, web servers typically don't need SMP, they do need lots of RAM (and I do mean lots) and a fast processor, but SMP isn't usually the best way to throw money at a webserver. by the time a PII-450 with 256Mb of RAM is getting hammered, I'd say first optimize your stuff a bit (like, serve your images from a separate Apache process with minimal options and no mod_{perl,php3}, then start thinking about getting more servers. putting the images on a separate box, for example ; that doens't even need any load balancing.
also: stability is much more important than speed, if only because it's much harder to see problems coming. if you absolutely want the very best speed, then there are faster alternatives than Apache; start by looking at Roxen. but I'd keep Apache anyway.
...then we could redo the mindcraft test much fairer than before, with results that can be considered "real world"!
Its very simple: take two identical computers that are in the typical performance category of a webserver. Make sure there are no outstanding hardware issues for either Linux or NT, and then put apache on both of them! Configure it identically for both platforms, and connect them both to a mix of unix, NT, and win95 clients. And use dynamic content, so the operating systems have to actually do some calculating operations instead of just shoving data through a huge pipe.
I think numbers like that would be useful indeed.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Remember when Mindcraft ran their second test and NT still outperformed Linux? Remember when everyone was complaining that it wasn't a fair test because they used Apache on Linux instead of Zeus? Remember everyone saying that Apache is a good, flexible server but not the fastest, and that if they had run the Mindcraft test on Zeus, Linux woulda kicked NT's ass?
Now, Microsoft is praising Apache and saying it's a great webserver. What do you think they're up to?
I would take a guess that the next step M'soft would try is a Tar Baby stratagy. Each new generation/upgrade of product will introduce new features that will have to be reverse engineered. This way they can claim that OSS will always be behind the times etc. etc.
Another tactic will be to compare performance on an OSS offering that will show them in the most favorable light. As the OSS community has an embarrassment of riches in terms of offerings tuned to particular needs ( faster, or smaller, or standards compliant, or trying new techniques), it should be simple for them to produce an apples to oranges comparison. The response should be considered: If this is your major care-about; use package X or Y. We need a map to compare different solutions, or it will be argued that there is just too much to choose from....
Two closing points: There is such a thing as damning with faint praise; and Embrace and Extend looks like Engulf and Devour......
Ogren hit the nail on the head with the first quote, and I can prove it. Take a look at eudora.com and then qualcomm.com .
And while I agree that hiring UNIX geeks with the right mix of skills can be a daunting task, the last statement really doesn't address the true root of the "problem" (the problem being that people don't get to use Apache): IT managers and bean counters are still scared about the supposed lack of support with OSS. Especially when it has to run their web site (even though their ftp site might be run by OSS, they couldn't care as long as "their Internet" doesn't go down). Using a possible lack of qualified talent as an excuse for Netscape Server's existence is really feeble.
I don't remember where I heard this, but it's been shown that people won't buy things if those things' selling price doesn't match or exceed what the buyer believes it ought to cost. If I was selling Mont Blanc pens for $10, would you buy one? If Mont Blanc itself sold them for $10, do you think they would be as popular as they are? Part of what makes $20 cigars so good is that they cost $20, and you can tell yourself and your friends that you're smoking really pricey cigars and that you're a big shot because of it. It doesn't make the cigars taste any better in the same way that Bic pens write just as well as the more expensive models.
When people buy Netscape servers, they want to feel the same way. Even if they are running it on Solaris (or Linux or whatever), and they already have the talent/hardware to run Apache, they won't. They'd rather pay for Netscape than use Apache for free. Because if Apache doesn't cost money, how can it be worth anything? (And usually after that thought, they trot out that "no support" thing as a final excuse they know they can use and get away with without looking like a clueless idiot.) The the only reason people run Netscape servers on any UNIX is because the decision makers/PHBs don't know any better.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
According to Netcraft's Web Server Survey, 57% of the web runs Apache in May 1999. IIS is at 23%. If Microsoft wanted to capture more marketshare, they could try to ease migration from Apache to an "enterprise solution" running NT/IIS. However, Microsoft has not done this. IIS insists on using tons of proprietary stuff like ASP.
Microsoft must know that people run Apache for good reasons and would never switch to NT/IIS. Also, if IIS allowed easy migration from Apache, then migration from IIS to would also be easy. Microsoft does not want to risk walking "near the edge" of open technologies.
cpeterso
I have yet to understand why anyone thinks ease of administration is such a big bonus... Apache is not hard to configure... There are gui's, but anyone worth what they are getting paid has figured out how easy it is to edit a text file... Your reason for why IIS is good is my exact reason why it's bad. Anything that is flexible and powerful is not simple. it's a fact of life. Unix is difficult because of it's power and flexibility. With NT, microsoft gives everyone the impression that any idiot can run it, so companies hire some idiot. Then this person doesn't know what they're doing, and it's the company that's really loosing out. A system is only as good as the person who runs it. If your argument for IIS is that idots can run it, well, that should tell you something right there.
English translation (from babelfish):
Ballmer: Apache is simply better
Microsoft vice Steve Ballmer praised the competition product Apache Webserver in a key note expressly: " do not offer if we with our servers enough features, which justify our prices, are we ourselves debt. Apache is simply better than we, if it concerns, several Sites on a server to hosten ", like that Ballmer with its speech in Vienna for the conception of Office 2000. The WWW server Apache maintained by an open project is a competitor of the Microsoft Internet information server (IIS), a constituent of Windows NT sound Netcraft has the Apache server a spreading of 56, IIS against it only 23 per cent. (jo/ c't)
/. is not in the U.S. whine-boy
* **
* **
the guys who run slashdot and the equipment its hosted on are in the U.S.
/. is on the Internet - national borders are something we are trying to overcome here
usually when someone posts an article here that links to a non-english article you'll find people rushing to try and get the "best" translation out...
here's my attempt:
***********************************************
Ballmer: Apache is simply better
Microsoft-VP Steve Ballmer, speaking in a Keynote address, openly praised the Apache Webserver, a competing product: "If we don't offer enough features to justify our pricing, we have only ourselves to blame. Apache is simply better than us, when it comes to hosting several sites on a single server", said Ballmer during a speech in Vienna introducing Office 2000. The Open Source WWW Server Apache is a competitor of Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS), a component of Windows NT. According to Netcraft Apache has a 56% share of websites versus IIS which has only 23%.
***********************************************
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
Mind you, this is the german -> babelfish -> english translation, so be warned. A yoda filter would be just as correct.
The competitor star Office: " those will not remain in the market. "
Linux: " one of the five problems, which employ me before falling asleep. But I sleep nevertheless still quite well.
" Apache is simply better "
" do not offer if we with our servers enough features, which justify our prices, are we ourselves debt. Apache is simply better than we, if it concerns, several Sites on a server version to hosten. Windows 2000 will solve, says this problem " Ballmer. [ the free ] ApacheServer holds with a market share of 57 per cent. Microsoft is with scarce 23 % of the server market because of second place.
No, a webserver does not need any lowlevel kernel access to speed it up. Apache can easily saturate most connections without a problem.
If you have performance problems with your webserver you're either doing it The Wrong Way, with user customizations, dynamic content generation, etc, in which case lowlevel access wouldn't help one bit, or you can simply place a reverse webcache in front of the webserver, which is actually optimized for serving plain pages as fast as possible.
Sure you can optimize a bit and get better results on benchmarks. But the idea of kernel access simply sacrifices stability and simplicity for no practical gains.
a la IBM
APACHE RUNS ON NT
and that is all that matters.
This will be m$ 'open source' stategy . . . watch it!
"yeah, we have open source . . . apache, perl, java, python, they all run on NT
Here are the important quotes from the original page:
"If we don't offer enough features at our servers, that justify our prices, it is our own fault. Apache is simply better than us, regarding hosting of multiple sites on one serverversion."
"StarOffice will not stay on the market."
About Linux:
"One of the five problems that bother me before I sleep. But I still sleep rather well."
About the trial:
"We broke no law. We will not join the fate of IBM, ten years trial and at the end loss of marketleadership."
AOL:
"Cool Company. We will fight aggressively with AOL for marketshares."
Furthermore:
There will be no Office 2000 for Apple. (Wait for 2001)
2 Million TestUsers didn't find many bugs in the past five months. M$ is now counting on the customers for that matter.
Ballmer is not saying that Apache is better, merely conceding the virtual hosting market to Apache. Which Apache wins hands down. His remarks are an interesting insight into the competition between the three major webservers. You have only three serious competitors: IIS, Netscape Enterprise Server, and Apache. And each has its own niche that it dominates in, leaving only a small intersection of real competition.
Apache is an interesting success story. It's one of the most successful open source projects of all time. Apache dominates certain spaces of the web server market, such as the virtual hosting space that Ballmer is conceding, along with the ISP market, and the "Slashdot" space. By the Slashdot space, I mean sites that have highly talented administrators and programmers, lots of traffic, but little money. mod_perl gives Apache an enormous adantages. Shashdot is doing things in mod_perl that other webservers can only offer through expensive application servers. But Apache is reasonably complicated, especially when you starting adding things like mod_perl to the mix. If you know what you are doing, it's great, but there's an intimidating learning curve.
Netscape Enterprise Server Since I work for Netscape I won't say much about Netscape's webserver, since people would think that I'm too biased anyway. But, in short, Netscape seems to cover the exact opposite of Apache's market. People who have the money to spend on a webserver (Netscape is the only webserver you have to pay money for), and are willing to pay that money in exchange for easier manageability and a formal support agreement.
Microsoft's IIS is the most interesting of the three. It's the quicksand solution. There are only three reasons to use IIS:
In short, M$'s webserver is a piece of crap. And everyone knows it, but some people are in a world where they either don't care, or don't have a choice.
So Ballmer can concede the virtual hosting market all that he wants. It doesn't matter to him. Those people need a real solution anyway. His customers are the uneducated and the ones that are boxed in to M$ solutions.
The competition between Apache and Netscape is interesting because they so rarely compete. The best way to sum up this up is to quote a sysadmin friend of mine. He said, "If I was going to run a website myself, I'd pick Apache. It's powerful and fast and stable. But if I had to run a site for a company, I'd pick Netscape. Hiring people qualified with whatever flavor or Perl/Apache/UNIX/mod_perl I choose is too hard and too expensive."
I don't know if I agree with him completely. The actual feature to feature comparison is interesting, but I'm too biased to make that comparison here. But it shows the marketplace's attitude: that the decision between Apache and Netscape is a choice between whether to spend money on a product or on administrators.
The Em-Ballmer is not going to praise anymore than he has to. Just last night I saw a newscast where someone was supposed to have spoken at a meeting about something or other but I couldn't tell what because all the footage they "chose" to put on the news went something like. "I don't know what their plan is. If you want to have change you have to, but I still can't see..."
Ballmer is kissing up to the DOJ. Think about this. Later on in the trial they'll say that Ballmer praised Apache. They'll never show the whole content of the message, it's in German newspapers, and I don't think courts recognize slashdot as being in the same league (never mind beyond) as MSNBC,NBC,CNBC,BBC,ABC,CBS,... ad newseaum. Nobody is going to go looking for the article through us, lest they be influenced by our opinions...
He'll probably say "I thought it was good". Since most people only get sound bites from actual speeches, his comment will subliminally be equivalent to a speech that includes talk of speeds, features, config wizards.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
If your company has the cash flow to do this. That's great. But most of them(The MS core client) doesn't. Like mine. We run our website on a single pentium MMX 150 MHZ. Windows must be restart once in a while, cause be have a FEW hit/sec.
By the way, i don't care if IIS beats Apache on a specific harware in a specific situation. I want the Overall performance for the overall situation.
Cheers,
---
assert(expired(knowldege)); core dump
Where Apache shines is it's ability to run on low-cost multi-process commodity boxes. I've been running Apache on a quad-processor M88K box for years, long before Micros~1 knew what SMP (or the Internet for that matter) stood for.
Basically, if you are that worried about performance, for the money you save from not buying NT server, go buy more processors or memory. But if your web site gets that much traffic to make this an issue, remember that neither IIS nor NT scale well on a single box. Their answer is to throw additional servers (and licenses of course) at the problem.
It is a common technique to point out a few of your small flaws to establish honesty so that everything else you say is believed as well.
Next time Steve says that Windows * is better than linux, he wants people to say: "Steve Balmer acknowledges when other products are better than MS products, therefore this statement must be true"
What I love about Apache, and something I know IIS will never adopt is the simple configuration file (now down to one file in Apache 1.3.x). If you've ever cloned a website, you know how handy a config file is! With IIS, (and even Netscape's products), your only option is to fill out the same forms, click the same buttons on a stupid property sheet (while sitting at that server's desktop). With Apache, ssh or ftp the config file to your target machine, and you're done! Simpler is better, you MS guys!
And really, why would you want to run a web server on any level of DOS filesystem?
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -- "Step Right Up", Tom Waits