Submitted by When the story about Microsoft shelling out $100,000 to Apache for ASF sponsorship broke across my radar it rather tickled my funny bone and my curiosity. When ASF Chairman Jim Jagielski declared that “Microsoft’s sponsorship makes it clear that Microsoft ‘gets it’ regarding the ASF” I had a fit of the giggles and then, like many others, I started to ponder on the reasons why and what it actually meant.
Gary Richmond explores Microsoft’s motives. You can read the full article at Freesoftware Magazine
anyone recall the bsd tcp/ip stack?
thats the reason why microsoft keeps dodging gpl licenced code, its like poison to them.
but microsoft is not alone. just look at the ifruit…
i could go as far as saying that all the large software corps have in one way or other tried to get away from the gpl license…
What BSD network stack? There has never been a BSD network stack in any externally released version of Windows (a BSD TCP/IP stack was used through a wrapper while bootstrapping the NT 3.1 networking code, but was subsequently discarded in favor of a native solution).
I’m not sure I buy the article completely, but I definitely understand caution when dealing with Microsoft in any way.
First of all, Microsoft doesn’t clearly gain anything from contributing to the Apache Foundation, do they? I don’t think their contribution gives them any access they didn’t have before, unless you count access to the minds of open source developers
My guess would be that people aren’t just going to trust Microsoft though.
I think Microsoft has benefited from younger computer geeks pirating Windows and development software like Visual Basic and Visual Studio, and Apache and PHP are taking away from the mindshare they get from that, but I’m not sure they’re really concerned about that either.
I don’t know what the answer is to the licensing issue. If I released open source code, it would likely be related to bridging multiple layers together, and it would take a lot of convincing to get me to release something like that under the GPL, since it would limit the interest in the library itself. I’d almost certainly release a big app as GPL.
Honestly, my best guess is the move is more political than anything else (in the sense of both government [aka antitrust] and social [why do you still hate us, OSS community?]). It could just be Microsoft trying to cover their bases, but they know the open source community is going to remain skeptical. I see no reason not to take their money, but still question any requests they make that may seem tied to it later
Lets face it, Microsoft hates open source. Any move to sponsor, promote or in any way drop money into open source coffers, has to be viewed with suspicion.
Maybe, just maybe they’re falling in love with open source, but I have my high doubts they’re falling in love with the philosophy and core purpose of it.
Then again, I did see pigs with wings last night, only, it was in my dreams.
“Lets face it, Microsoft hates open source. Any move to sponsor, promote or in any way drop money into open source coffers, has to be viewed with suspicion.”
Microsoft has never hated Open Source, what they dislike is the GPL. The Apache license is being investigated to see whether it is compatible with the GPL.
From License page on apache.org:
“The result is a license that is supposed to be compatible with other open source licenses, while remaining true to the original goals of the Apache Group and supportive of collaborative development across both nonprofit and commercial organizations. The Apache Software Foundation is still trying to determine if this version of the Apache License is compatible with the GPL. “
Maybe not “openly” hated it. There have certainly been times when Microsoft has not been happy about open source projects (in my opinion). I seem to remember those rumours about Microsoft trying to side with CPU or motherboard manufacturers, only allowing operating systems with a digital certificate to load and execute etc (I have absolutely no idea as to the substance of these claims). On the whole I think they are quite accepting but that’s only because the ball is in their court. Once/if the table turns we will probably see another side of Microsoft altogether.
“On the whole I think they are quite accepting but that’s only because the ball is in their court. Once/if the table turns we will probably see another side of Microsoft altogether.”
I tend to agree. Will just have to wait and see how this all goes.
Do you know who made those claims? idiots – plain and simple. As soon as TPM was mentioned, there were idiots out there making claims that OEM’s would shut out Linux, that Intel would shut out non-Microsoft operating systems. The same idiots that bought you this are the same ones who are going on about so-called ‘show downs’ in Windows Vista due to DRM – ignoring the fact that DRM is an on demand service and has no impact on the performance of the rest of the machine.
This is what frustrates me no end to the people on this forum, people making wild tin-hat conspiracy theories about stuff they don’t know a damn thing about. Friggin 15 year olds making high claims about Microsoft and Linux on the desktop. This truly is pathetic. Yes, I am pissed off, because every day I read this comments section, the quality just keeps going further and further down the toilet. It won’t be long before this place is yet another slashdot/digg/kryoshin/userfriendly cesspit of idiocy.
Won’t be long?
It already is. This site is just as bad as Slashdot.
No longer are there any informative comments. It is only about bashing Microsoft and stating Linux is superior – even though it has less than 1% market share and loads of problems.
Linux has stopped bringing new things to the table for a long time. I wouldn’t recommend Linux to anyone because of the stupid ‘community’.
You appear to be ignoring a good half of the commenters here.
Yes, there are the rabid pro-Linux fanboys. There are also plenty of pro-Microsoft fanboys, and plenty of pro-Apple fanboys too.
Back on topic…
Microsoft have a history of doing everything they can to crush the competition. They are, after all, a for-profit company, and a ruthlessly effective one at that.
Apache clearly counts as the competition – it’s a competing web server to Microsoft’s own IIS, and it primarily runs on completing operating systems too.
Surely nobody believes that Microsoft’s motives here purely altruistic? They have to be getting something out of this.
Apache is already widely used, and Microsoft can’t beat it by trying to make a better web server. They’ve tried – it doesn’t work.
While I’m sure they’d prefer everyone to use IIS on Windows Server, Apache on Windows Server is still a better proposition to Microsoft than Apache on anything else.
The problem is that there’s no advantage to running Apache (or PHP, or MySQL) on Windows. Not even maintenance – Windows admins have no experience with them, and tend to have no idea how to handle them. They just work better, and are better supported, under Linux or any of the free Unix systems.
That’s clearly the key idea behind this article – that Microsoft might be trying to bias Apache development towards Windows, possibly to the detriment of the other platforms.
It’s a concern, certainly. One of the great things about developing using PHP, MySQL or PostgreSQL, and Apache is that it’ll run on damned near anything, and it’s very easy to migrate between platforms.
This cross-platform support is something the Apache developers prize. I don’t see Microsoft sponsoring the project changing any of that. The “worst” that could happen is that the Apache developers spend a bit more effort to bring the Windows port up to par with the rest.
Microsoft probably have an endgame in mind – you can be sure that they want to get rid of Apache – but this isn’t it.
I don’t buy the idea that Microsoft would come out with a Microsoft version of Apache either. They already have a reasonable web server. Keeping up with a fork of Apache would require a huge effort that’d be better spent on making their own web server better. An equivalent of mod_rewrite would be a good start.
The whole licensing thing is, therefore, irrelevant. Apache’s own momentum, combined with the fact that web servers are pretty much a commodity by now, is more than enough to prevent anyone from doing a commercial fork of Apache. You just couldn’t make enough money to cover the maintenance costs, much less move it forwards and provide a reason to use it over Apache itself.
Microsoft has no power to force the Apache development team to do anything. Apache isn’t dependent on Microsoft charity and, quite obviously, Apache has managed to straddle the open source and commercial worlds rather nimbly by not clinging to one ideology or another. Frankly, I’d be a little insulted if I were on the Apache team. You’d think, in reading this article, that they’re a bunch of mush-headed cretins, fawning before big bad Microsoft. I don’t think so. Give them a little credit, for chrissake.
Along the same lines, I think Microsoft might be looking to “bundle” apache like other companies have done. Like the parent said they may be ready to work on the third “E” Extend apache as part of windows as an option to IIS. Then they can do whatever they want. Once more people use “Microsoft Apache” versus vanilla Apache the organization will be forced to bend to the Microsoft extensions over 100% cross platform support because so many people have the “broken” version.
Less than 1% market share on the desktop, but a good 35%-40% in the server market. Servers are a far larger market than desktops, by the way.
Can you provide point of reference for the 40% number? How many web servers? Database servers? Mail servers? DNS? Authentication? File servers? Now how many corporate non public servers?
What I’m getting at is, how do you know 40% of all servers are running Linux? Maybe only 40% of web sites…but that isn’t 40% of web servers, virtual hosting makes hundreds of sites easy to host on 1 web server.
Do what we did – Use Google, Wikipedia, etc.
Yes. Read and analysis the data provided by companies such as Gartner and IDC and the sales figures published by OEMs such as HP, IBM and Dell.
Who cares?
Congratulations on being part of the other retarded community, the Windows zealots.
It’s hard to improve upon perfection.
I never said I believed them, I stated they were rumours. I had my doubts about the rumours ever since I heard them, thinking it would be illegal anyway. But people believed them. They believed them because it sounded like a credible action from Microsoft. Typical responses from people who knew no better:
“Yeah, that sounds like Microsoft.”
“Yeah, they’ll probably get away with it.”
“Well you know what they say, embrace, extend and extinguish.”
I know I should have picked a better example to summarise my view of Microsoft’s stance on open source software, but that was the first that came to mind.
This is one of the best comments I have read on OSAlert in a very very long time.
Edited 2008-08-10 10:26 UTC
oh, i would say its far past that point…
OEMs already do this, in a manner of speaking, at the behest of Microsoft. The draconian OEM agreements prohibit them from selling computers with no OS pre-installed (just try asking for one for fun), are extremely unfavourable to OEMs who ship and bundle competing software explicitly in a competing fashion with Windows and Office and prohibit an OEM from talking publicly about the contract they sign. Even to this day, Amstrad cannot talk about the MS-DOS deal they signed with Microsoft.
This is an absolute cornerstone of Microsoft’s business and profit, and anyone who doesn’t understand it is, quite frankly, an idiot – at best. In all honesty, I totally admire Microsoft for being able to put something together that people will not just fail to comprehend, but even defend it as a tin foil hat conspiracy, because they haven’t the faintest idea what they’re talking about. That’s some mean feat. It really is. I mean, the above is just so bare faced it cannot possibly be true, can it?
If a TPM system ends up becoming what they hope, do you honestly believe and think that it won’t be used to firm up the above manner of business in a big way? Has nothing sank into anyone’s thick skulls over the best part of the last thirty years?
At this point in time, a widespread TPM and Trusted Computing framework is simply impractical, would be chock full of bureaucracy and totally unworkable, and it’s possible that it never will be workable on a widespread scale. However, devices like Tivo have already proved that you can make life pretty darn difficult for people to run even their own code beyond a certain point unless they can get it signed by a trusted authority. At this point, Linus Torvalds’s assertion that we are free not to use such hardware still holds true, but, the possibility and temptation remains.
Firstly Microsoft denied that there was any DRM checking at all in Vista. Secondly, they said that it was OK because it was an opt-in service and only happened in a set of narrow circumstances.
Logically speaking, if a machine is constantly checking to see if I have the right to access a piece of media and checking for ‘suspicious’ looking frames passed to my graphics or sound card then it will impact the performance of the system. Let’s face it, Vista’s performance is impacted all over the place.
The DRM system is ‘on demand’ at the moment (whatever that happens to mean), but Microsoft, and others, will have no qualms about moving that to other forms of files and data. Why? Because it doesn’t half shore up the business and profit making model Microsoft has (see above) in a pretty damn definitive way, and they’ve shown that they have the clout to take hardware manufacturers and others with them. nVidia and ATI have already jumped through an unbelievable amount of hoops with Vista, their graphics cards and drivers.
What frustrates me even more than those making generally wild claims are those who have failed to grok any trends or anything at all that has happened in the industry over the past thirty years or so. It frustrates me that people who should be older than fifteen still dismiss things they can’t explain as tin foil hat talk.
Regarding the article, it might be worth considering that Microsoft doesn’t use Apache at all and came up with IIS instead, has fought quite vigorously to overhaul Apache’s lead and Apache is the one thing that stands between them and the number one web server slot:
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2008/07/07/july_2008_web_server_s…
It then stands to reason that someone will ask the question ‘Why?’. Some of it may well be fanciful speculation and extrapolation, but the question still remains given Microsoft’s track record over thirty years or so. The first rule is that they don’t give anything out for nothing.
They don’t. They catch here is that they’re trying to sell more licenses of Windows Server. Apache is a competitor, but MS doesn’t make money off of IIS. The real competitor is Apache on Linux rather then Apache on Windows. Having MS tech as the number one web server would be nice for them, but they would much rather have Windows as the underlying OS.
I’m not really sure what plan MS has, but if if ends up with more technology being cross platform that will make me happy.
A good link about the matter; http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2008/07/27/apache_and_microsoft/
Well they do, because it is a technological barrier that keeps people on Windows once they use it.
Where do you get that ridiculous notion from?
I seriously doubt they’ll do do anything with $100,000 though and it will all be forgotten pretty quickly.
How so? That comment was a little esoteric, so if you could clarify…
I was thinking of the Windows Apache and PHP ports being on par with their *ix counterparts. It would just make my life easier if I could go between Windows and an *ix with a common tool set.
I have no delusions about MS porting their tech to other OSs, and that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about Open Source software being made available on the Windows platform.
Yeah, we’ll probably never know exactly what the $100 grand bought, but whatever really. Money is meant to be spent after all.
Anyway links that I’m getting my viewpoint from.
http://port25.technet.com/archive/2008/07/25/oscon2008.aspx
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080725-microsoft-to-sponsor-…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-9999824-75.html
How so? That comment was a little esoteric, so if you could clarify… [/q]
Vendor lock-in is where I think he was heading. If you want to continue using IIS then you must continue to use Windows.
That makes sense. Although, I’ve never experienced wanting to keep using IIS.
I was thinking he meant something like IIS plus ASP.net keeping people locked to MS, but I wasn’t sure.
Whatever the cause, there *are* slowdowns in Vista,
[and some of it has to do with some of the system state interrogations that are related to preventing piracy.]
I’m just compiling a look at ZIP performance, as an example of Vista slowdowns, extracting a ZIP file in vista SP0 is 3300% slower than it can be.
Instead of taking almost 2 minutes to extract a zip, SP0 takes almost an hour.
Service Pack 1 reduces this to 920%, this is still almost 15 minutes
[times compared to 7-zip performance]
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computing_Base
Give me a break, they hate open source because they loose control.
Microsoft would much prefer to have the source code locked shut.
“Give me a break, they hate open source because they loose control.
Microsoft would much prefer to have the source code locked shut.”
I am not arguing the point about them wanting it shut. They love OSS though, as they can get what they want from it…like with the BSD code they use. Apache license would allow them to do the same thing, unless I am reading it wrong.
Microsoft has never hated Open Source, what they dislike is the GPL. The Apache license is being investigated to see whether it is compatible with the GPL
Sorry, but I disagree. Microsoft hates all competition, no matter where it comes from. Why do you think they try to buy/crush opponents in every field? The best example is Quicken. When MS couldn’t buy them, the created MS Money.
Edited 2008-08-10 14:16 UTC
You don’t seriously think other big companies, like IBM or SUN, really loves OSS out of principles, do you?
It’s all about the bottom line for every commercial entity involved.
Funny thing is, people whine and bitch about how MS does not contribute and when they finally do people whine and bitch that they contribute. Awesome.
This article reads more like a “Boohoo, Apache does not like the awesome GPLv3 license even though it’s the most awesomest license evar” whine than anything else.
My prediction before reading the article: wild speculation and unsubstantiated tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories.
….
And after reading it, it looks like my initial guesses were correct. I particularly enjoyed the unintentional irony of the 2nd paragraph, which basically boiled down to “I’m not paranoid, but… now for some paranoid ravings that make believers in Moon landing hoaxes/homeopathy/etc look balanced.”
I’d rather be paranoid than naive to the point of stupidity. Microsoft has openly waged war against open source for ages now, they think it’s evil and anti-competitive blah blah blah (in other words they fail at competition).
Now.. if someone who’s shooting bombs down your town came in with “sponsorship” during a time of war, something tells me you just wouldn’t accept it.
The analogy might be a bit too far fetched but it holds, they are up to something which will only benefit them in the end and possibly damage Apache (which btw. is the same thing, by damaging Apache they benefit).
Excessive paranoia is just as naive as excessive credulity. Both are absolutist positions, both put authority/reputation above actual evidence.
There’s a difference between informed wariness and a knee-jerk reaction of “OMG, it’s Microsoft so it must be evil – sharpen the pitchforks and get those torches lit!”
Are you kidding? For one, that sounds like a “take the money and run” situation if ever there was one. For another, things are rarely that simple in the real world – if they were, then (for example) Microsoft would have immediately canned Office X the minute Apple’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” campaign began airing.
Specifically?
And *how* is Microsoft going to damage Apache? The only specific detail mentioned in the linked article is to draw a flimsy parallel with IE “killing” Mosiac (perhaps he meant Netscape?).
According to the page on Apache’s site describing their sponsorship levels, a platinum-level sponorship gets Microsoft: a logo image on Apache’s “thank you” page, a sponsorship logo image that Microsoft can put on their site, and a joint press release. It doesn’t buy them any input into / control over Apache’s development process – and even if it *did*, how long do you think it would take before someone started a fork?
If that’s a strategy to “kill Apache,” it’s a pretty ill-conceived one.
If the US Government had a legally proven history of faking major events and performing conspiracies as a politial tool, then many, many, more people would believe the Moon landings to be a hoax.
Unfortunately, they wouldn’t make the MHBs (moon hoax believers) any more intellectually justified than the loonies who bend over backwards to interpret Microsoft’s every action as evidence of some grand, sinister conspiracy.
Apache will have 3.0 coming out and people will be moving to that platform.
However, back to reality and what’s currently available:
From http://www.apache.org
This says it all. They realize that Google and Yahoo are huge endorsers of Apache and they will never own the search engine space now that Yahoo refuses mergers so they better get on-board to compete.
thing is this, i can see google and yahoo making good use of the apache server. but microsoft has its own server, are they not basically sponsoring their competitor?
Apache runs on Windows…
Also, Apache makes libraries for a lot of things besides serving webpages.
Very few Apache installations run on Windows, and getting IIS ahead in the long run is worth far, far, far more to Microsoft than boosting some woeful ‘Apache on Windows’ usage.
You’ll have to do better, because I’m not seeing how that’s going to benefit Microsoft.
How about this:
The next generation of IIS will be build on Apache…
Or maybe Microsoft is already doing this and has run into some issues, and by sponsoring ASF they can get the help needed to work around or fix them.
Very unlikely. They have just re-written IIS7 from scratch and I don’t know what they would gain from Apache-code at this stage. Few versions back it could have been the case.
I believe this is only some PR-stunt, where Microsoft can easily appear as supporters of open source. Maybe to please EU etc. They just included FastCGI to support PHP by default in IIS7, maybe they are afraid of anti-trust suits.
Also, there is this quote that fits in this discussion:
“Love your enemies: they’ll go crazy trying to figure out what you’re up to.”
That makes zero sense. Contributing to Apache doesn’t help them compete at all.
Well if that’s the case then Apache does not have to accept the cash. 100k for MS are pocket money. Probably they think it’s all good but personally I don’t know their motives. I guess the open source community compares MS to Mr. Burns from the Simpsons when he is trying to make things look as if he is a good guy but always has a vicious plan
“Free Software Magazine”
I stopped reading there, those are nothing but a FUD factory.
Hi,
“sure”.
I especially liked the way you’ve backed your claim.
Merc.
No he doesn’t, he spends three pages making vague insinuations and wild statements.
Just to clarify, MS doesn’t really hate OSS, they just hate linux, because linux is the only OSS project that has actually posed a threat to Windows entrenchment.
From a pragmatic POV, it makes sense that they would want to try and enable better interoperability of Apache et al. on their own server platform, particularly now that their server platforms are actually gaining cred. Apache remains the dominant web server platform, and presents a larger pool of developers and support, rather than relying upon their own proprietary solution. It’s yet another sign that MS is acknowledging that OSS isn’t going to run away and hide, so they’re trying to figure out how to co-exist with it in a non-threatening way (as long as it doesn’t involve linux, of course). It’s not like MS loses revenue if customers don’t choose IIS, any more than they lose revenue when end users run Firefox on Windows. They lose a degree of customer control and lock-in, but I think they’ve figured out that isn’t going to last much longer to the extent that it has until now.
Having said that, obviously the community should watch with both eyes open. But I think the nail-biters are giving MS too much credit in assuming that they can simply co-opt Apache at will, with some money and patches. If nothing else, there are some seriously heavy hitters standing behind the Apache Foundation, and this isn’t an instance where MS will simply be able to bully a smaller organization into concession, or have their lawyers do a dance round the licensing.
Just my 2c…
The author is an ignorant radical, having never heard of non-copyleft licenses or at least completely not understanding them (The Free Software Foundation (FSF) never accepted that the Apache Licence v2.0 was compatible with the GPLv2 (…) it seems that the problems arise because the Apache licence is not viral and does not support Copyleft). Sic!
And the suggestion to stop making free software available for Windows, when Linux has about 1% of desktop market share… I’m wondering if being supporter of Free Software Foundation is not a general symptom of a mental disorder. These people seem to live in their own world.
Edited 2008-08-10 08:18 UTC
I didn’t even read the damn article. It just spells extreme paranoia and hate-mongering to me.
FSF is becoming a fascist cult organization thar sucks people’s wallets dry. They are comparable to Scientology at this stage.
microsoft is saying:
thank you apache for being opensource,
so we can use ur techniques in our iis7,
here is some money,
go buy some candy and dont be late home…
That article is scary, the author seems to have little conception that people just have different opinions, and that free software as he perceives it, is not the only ethical thing. Two quotes:
Right. Apache uses their own license for a reason: they want others to “pick off” their stack. If they didn’t want that, they would not have used the Apache License. I personally like the Apache License as well: it is simple and clear, and for most code I don’t mind if it is reused in proprietary or FLOSS software. I (and I think many others do) don’t strive for a full copyleft ecosystem, there is a place for FLOSS software and proprietary software. Mix and match.
You’ve got to be serious? First of all, it’s not “GNU/Linux software”. A lot of copyleft software is/was written on BSD, OS X, Solaris and, yes, Windows. Second, you want freedom, but only for your own little island?
It’s just code, if you just release it to the public, people will recompile it on their platform. And if it were made illegal, people would posts instructions how you could still compile it on Windows or OS X. Sounds familiar, huh? (Win32 codecs, libdvdcss in the US, FreeType hinting…)
Of course, this would also be a PR disaster, marking most of the FLOSS movements zealots.
Edited 2008-08-10 09:30 UTC
Maybe reasonable people are just less vocal but I find it kind of scary that there seem to be only extremists on both sides.
Pro IP:
OMFG! Thieves everywhere! Everybody’s a criminal!
Lock them away forever! If it weren’t for these damn Commie-Nazis my crappy software would’ve made me billions. BILLIONS I TELL’S YA!
Against IP:
Oh noes! I can’t find any documentation on how to get GNUUUUUU SLAAAAAAAAAAAAASH *mumbles*linux*/mumbles* to run on my washing machine. It’s an outrage!!1one! It’s Bill Gates plotting against me. It must be him! Him and the government! They are all around you. You can feel them when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It’s the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth:
That I can’t get Emacs to run on my toaster, GOD DAMN IT!!!
But I’ll teach them a lesson: No Emacs on Windows. PERIOD.
MUAHAHAHAHA! Take that, Bill!
Oh, I can imagine him now:
His shirt soaked with tears, his 5 cent haircut all messed up, begging me on his knees:
“Please, I NEED Emacs! Come on, the world economy is crumbling! Don’t you have a heart?”
…
Yeah, sweet!
Let’s make a deal:
The pro people stop shipping everything with an EULA the size of a novel that basically tell’s you that you are for all eternity the ass slave of whoever you bought it from.
In return the FOSS people admit that there are more important matters than software in this world, that not everybody who doesn’t like the GPL is a retard, and that *gosh* it might not always be the best license.
Then maybe, just maybe, we could concentrate on the regular user who doesn’t (in one way or another) care about OSs or IP and stuff.
You know, the user who’s got things to do, who doesn’t want to relearn how to use his computer twice a week. The kind of user who wonders why he needs to buy a new pc to do the same stuff.
It seems to me that people on both sides have completely lost it.
I don’t want to hear about how I’m a baaaaad communist because I don’t give a sh*t about EULAs and the like and I certainly don’t want to be told that I’m a tool of evil if I use proprietary software, no matter why.
Edited 2008-08-10 14:47 UTC
That was a funny rant
RandomGuy wins!
Thread over, move along.
No, Microsoft is not trying to kill Apache. Why is it so hard to accept that MS simply wants to make sure that Apache runs very well on windows?
Microsoft has seen the popularity of Apache/MySQL/PHP as a platform among a large number of web developers. They have also realized that convincing all of these developers to drop those tools for IIS/ASP/SQLserver will be futile. Thus the next logical step is to make sure Apache/MySQL/PHP runs really well on Windows.
Because it’s of no value to them or their business model? I also don’t see them contributing anything meaningful to actually getting Apache running well on Windows though, so you jumped ahead a bit there.
Yes, and they want them. In order to do that they’ll have to give a little to get some payoff later.
What do you think the next logical step is after that?
Sure it is. If MS can convince someone to run Apache on Windows rather than Linux then they’ve potentially sold one more server license and, more importantly, prevented on more Linux server from being deployed. What more business value could you want.
Make WAMP a more popular server platform. Convince people to use WAMP rather than LAMP for deploying web sites. Get people hooked on Windows Server and Windows development, deployment and management tools. And generally try to get people away from Linux servers and onto Windows servers.
This is all about Linux and not Apache.
No. That’s not the end of it and it’s rather naive. Once you’ve got someone on your platform then you need to keep them there, as Microsoft has realised so often.
You still haven’t told us what happens after that.
Do you want me to go on until the end of time. Are you going to answer all my points with “but what happens after that” without coming with any counters? If so this discussion will get very dull very quickly.
I’m not laying out Microsoft’s entire business plan for the next half century, simply trying to explain what interest they could have in Apache.
But OK. I imagine that the next step for Microsoft would be to try to convince at least some of these developers to move from Windows/Apache/PHP/MySQL to Windows/Apache/PHP/SQLserver. As for keeping people on Windows, they would best be served doing that by trying to producing better server management and deployment tools than is available for Linux. Something which they seem to be doing. Even as a long time Linux fan and someone who’s worked many years as a Linux and Unix sysadmin I have to admit that Windows Server 2008 does look like a solid and interesting OS.
As I said before, Microsoft has no interest in and nothing to gain from killing Apache (nor could they even if they really wanted to). This is all about attacking Linux on the server side. Excellent Apache support is just one of the approaches they’ll use to do so.
What I don’t understand is why people think a donation from Microsoft gives Microsoft control in any way over Apache development, or any ability to bundle Apache with Windows that they didn’t already have? Am I missing something?
I think that this move from Microsoft comes back to Ballmer’s now infamous proclamation: “developers, developers, developers!”
Microsoft understand better than most that the platform that developers learn and are productive with ends up heavily influencing the market, because employers are looking for skilled people and will end up using whatever skills most employees have. And when I look at the skill sets of university graduates I’m seeing a lot of PHP. I’m also seeing a lot of PHP in the skill sets of outsourcing companies and freelancers in low cost development economies.
If employers decide to use PHP because that’s where significant skill and experience is (at relatively cheap rates), and employers think “Oh PHP, we have to use Linux for that right?” then Microsoft has a big problem.
It was not benevolence that led Microsoft to give patches to PHP to ensure better PHP / MSSQL Server interoperability. They want PHP to run well on Windows and to be compatible with MS technology. They do not want to lose business customers to Linux because those customers think PHP is synonymous with Linux.
Tying this back to Microsoft donating to Apache, I think they’re sending a clear PR message that [certain] open source tools on are absolutely supported and suitable on Windows, and there’s no reason to use Linux if you want to develop with PHP and run the Apache web server.
Simultaneously, Microsoft will be downright hostile to MySQL as a viable platform, and will spread fear citing lack of scalability, features, and robust enterprise support at every opportunity, as every choice to use MySQL might be a choice not to use MS SQL Server, and THAT costs them money.
Edited 2008-08-10 15:26 UTC
Softly softly does it.
Yes, and it’s become apparent to me no how much people just have no clue whatsoever what that means. Remember, you’re all just one-night-stands so Microsoft gets its wicked way in the long run:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleB…
Quite clever really.
To be absolutely fair they’d be right about mysql. Have you ever tried to compare it to postgresql, or almost any commercial DBMS? Even mssql, as bad as it is, is superior in many regards.
The rabid Linux haters love to trot out the “1% market share” and MOST conveniently leave out that is ONLY ON THE DESKTOP.
Well, the computing world is a bit larger than that folks!
Do any of you have a smartphone? : Linux 5% vs Windows 12%
Have you heard of servers? Linux 25% vs Windows 65%
There is also the embedded market: Linux 35% vs Windows 5%
Linux is in no way kicking Windows butt, but it’s very competitive in every market except the desktop
Also, let’s not forget that the New York Stock Exchange has recently migrated from proprietary Unix to Redhat Linux. Does anyone here think they simply dumped their proven platforms to save a few bucks with a niche OS that has “huge problems”
If you truly believe that, there not enough water in the world for you to soak your head in.
As a requirement to their shareholders, yes.
You can paint it any way you want thereafter.
As a company with a history of eating the other guys for lunch, you always have to be cautious when dealing with Microsoft. I think its pretty clear what this is about. And while some of you fanbois didnt read the article, the authors understands it too. This is about making sure Apache runs well of Windows Server. MS realizes that it cant push out all of OSS, but if it all runs on Windows, they still win. They made the same offer to the makers of Blender. The only problem I see here, is patents. What will Microsoft do about patented technology in the future. Lets suppose MS convinces Apache to include ASP support in their software. Will this give MS leverage over Apache in the future? As long as Apache is careful, they should be ok. Course, they could protect themselves by using the GPL. But that is their choice.
…the answer is probably “yes”.
I am not a Microsoft fan–far from it!–but this article is completely off-base. It says, for example, that Microsoft contributed 100000USD to Apache so that Microsoft could take the apache source code, alter it and release their own closed-source, slightly-incompatible version. But… anyone can do that, including Microsoft, without paying a dime.
The article makes much of Microsoft contributing to PHP because the PHP license is “only” LGPL. While the reasons given for their contributes are likely true–keeping PHP users on Windows by making PHP work better on Windows–it really has nothing to do with the license. The motivation for contributing to Apache is likely much the same: They’d rather have you use Apache on Windows so you can easily “upgrade” to IIS later.
The article says nothing new, offers no insights, includes only baseless and naive speculation… why was this story posted, again? Is teh headline “Microsoft may not have pure motives”? Or is it “Microsoft motivated by self-interest”? None of this is remarkable.
I just wasted three minutes reading an article with absolutely no information in it. Can I get those minutes back? I could have played game or something…
Paranoia may be justified, especially with Balmer at the helm. The problem is this: what can MS do to kill Apache, or any related popular FOSS project?
Can they buy shares? No.
Can they force people to use it, or to not use it? No.
Can they pollute the code base? Yes, but not without being allowed to by maintainers that will be vigilant.
If they sue over licensing, can they stop the project? No. The people would move to a new one, and it would keep going, possibly in a country they couldn’t do anything to it in, until the courts were done with the original.
If they sue over anything, they could very well have IBM, Sun, and/or Novell itching to send lawyers to defend said project.
Microsoft are now free to take Apache source code and proceed to amend, tweak or customise it to the point of what Bruce Perens has called ^aEURoeengineered incompatibility^aEUR At that point Microsoft could repeat the successful disaster of bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, only this time it would be Apache and with all the attendant broken web standards that tormented web developers^aEUR”but this time on the server instead of the desktop.
…until you removed it and installed Apache proper, which would take very little time, relative to the time normally taken setting up a Windows server. Every guide on the web would still use genuine Apache, as well, if they were to do it. It would have as much life as XFree86 does now, as soon as you stepped outside of MS HQ.
The sky is still miles above my head, young FSF chickens.
Microsoft is powerless against a popular FOSS project, unless they have some true grievance (like direct use of their code).
I would hope that MS is seeing that people want to use this FOSS on their non-Free OS, and realize that they can either join in, or be left behind. If not, and they intend to try their old Extend, Embrace, Extinguish strategies, they will be in for some rude surprises.