Does Apache Show That Money Talks?

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2008-10-30 16:34:00 UTC
Modified: 2008-10-30 16:34:00 UTC

Apache helicopter

APACHE continues to gain at the expense of Microsoft IIS. Yesterday's figures from Netcraft confirmed this.

“Whether Apache (or its userbase) cares about GNU/Linux is a separate question...”Microsoft really wants to be part of this success and if IIS cannot beat Apache, then Microsoft is determined to ensure that GNU/Linux can at least be replaced by Microsoft Windows Server on servers running Apache. Whether Apache (or its userbase) cares about GNU/Linux is a separate question, but as we strongly stressed yesterday, it should care. Microsoft's vigorous insistence that its software should receive precedence on its own platform goes a long way back. Consider Java, for example. Remember Netscape too.

Apache seems to be setting itself for more Microsoft influence. We wrote about this before [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17] and now arrives another early sign.

Apache's annual conference was announced yesterday and a lot of it harps about Microsoft, which is still losing to Apache. Microsoft, which became one of the sponsors, is mentioned 8 times in the press release, including the headline. It will also keynote the event. Have a look at the press release.

ApacheCon US 2008 Keynotes to Focus on Central Issues of Open Source Standards, Microsoft, and Technology's Role in Rebuilding Communities

Open Source notables from Microsoft and the Open Web Foundation highlight ApacheCon US 2008 conference in New Orleans

[...]

2008 keynote speakers include Sam Ramji, Senior Director of Platform Strategy Microsoft's Open Source division...

And that's just a portion of it. The motives are not hard to see. Microsoft's wants to have Apache (or its users) divorce from GNU/Linux, but it will disguise this using messages like "playing nice", "we've changed", and "it's goodwill." ⬆

"It's part of a continuing behavior pattern by Microsoft that I think it's fair to call "dirty fighting." GoDaddy was using Apache (I assume on Linux) because it was a great technical solution. They didn't switch to IIS on Windows Server 2003 for any technical reason. The switch was accompanied by a press release by GoDaddy, containing Microsoft promotional language. Now, I've changed many servers from one thing to another, but I've never made a press release about it. GoDaddy wouldn't be doing that unless Microsoft had offered them something valuable in return. There has been talk in the domain business that Microsoft has been offering the large domain registries a wad of cash to switch their parked sites. There is no other reason to do this than to influence the Netcraft figures."

--Bruce Perens

Comments

HarryTuttle

2008-10-31 09:24:11

As the picture above suggests: The war against FOSS already begun. It's not been anounced openly, but the enemy has been defined long before (Halloween, cancer, communistic) and the thoughtful planned actions to hurt and weaken the growing "threat" to MS are tarnished by newspeak and contradicting behavior from the convicted Mono-polist as to not draw to much attention and legal charges again.

MS can't really win, because they cannot "magically" remove the source-code overnight and all causalties they try to fight return eventually under a new free license (StarOffice, Netscape) to attack them even stronger.

Patents and incompatibility (deviding the landscape) are the only hopes left for MS to survive its old pattern.

Does Apache Show That Money Talks?

ApacheCon US 2008 Keynotes to Focus on Central Issues of Open Source Standards, Microsoft, and Technology's Role in Rebuilding Communities

Comments

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