Microsoft Sponsors Apache Software Foundation

gbjbaanb writes "Ars Technica reports that Microsoft is to sponsor the Apache Foundation to the tune of $100k. From the article: 'I asked him if this could possibly be the beginning of a broader initiative by Microsoft to increase Apache compatibility with .NET web development technologies, but he says it's still too early to guess Microsoft's future plans for Apache participation. ... He doesn't anticipate a confrontational response from the developers working on individual Apache projects ... The response of the broader open source software community, however, is harder to predict.' (In related news, MS also intends to participate in the RubySpec project.)"

Cliche?

Would, "It's a trap", be too cliche?

Microsoft Support of OSS

Could it be that they would like to quit supporting IIS? Make Apache do the dirty webserver stuff, but keep all the content creation in a dll or something. Maybe the 100k is for working on Windows API's and such?

That is the only logical conclusion, as nobody just gives money to the competitor. Right?

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

I don't know if they see it as a replacement so much as IIS/Webservers aren't terribly important to their core business model. IIS is a pretty crappy web server in comparison to... ummm... almost everything else. I think it's more important to Microsoft that people are using .net and Windows servers. If they want to use another web server on Windows w/ .net, so be it. They'll always offer IIS, but they don't fight IIS replacements tooth and nail like they fight Office replacements.

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

I'm not so sure... IIS serves as a tie-in to quite a few different (and damned profitable) Microsoft products... starting with Exchange (for OWA), and branching out a couple thousand different directions from there.

Microsoft's income depends way too heavily on products having exclusive interoperability (e.g. IIS, Exchange, Active Directory...)

Start breaking that up, and enterprises would be more easily liable to start choosing solutions that don't have acronyms like "CAL" anywhere in the invoice.

While yes, IIS is pretty much a money hole for MSFT in a direct sense, they have way too many enterprise products that rely on its existence, and it in turn requires Windows, and only Windows.

Re:

And those enterprise products connect to IIS through COM. Which is perhaps what I should have said instead of API.

So as I said, perhaps this is to get Apache working with Windows COM objects so that they can still have Sharepoint creating content in a compiled application, but the stdout is just changed to html and passed to $webserver.

This is my first conspiracy theory, dammit. Give me a break!

How to interpret this.

Based on Ballmers history, I'd say this is inroads by which to "divide and conquer". So; with the check, what was on the document saying what they wanted in return. Microsoft never gives anything away and usually takes everything it wants?

It begins

Embrace

Re:

if this is what .Net and Silverlight to get recognition, forget it.

a language/framework that is not competitive enough to be recognized by itself will be ok if there is broader support for it ? dont think so.

It's nice

to see Microsoft embracing Apache, oh no, wait a minute I know how this is going ....

Apache 2.4

Apache 2.4 release notes
new modules:
mod_drm
mod_ooxml
mod_reject-firefox

Developer, developer, developer....!

Steve Ballmer is either:
1) Trying to appear more "open" (what with all the lawsuits in Europe & the oh-so-enthusiastic reception of OOXML), so they can have more influence in the real standards body.
2) Simply trying that old trick (to pretend suck up to developers) & then turn around & do something else.

Eitherway, its a PR stunt because it's hard to believe Microsoft wants to change its definition of "industry standards" from "something we came up with" to---wait for it---"industry standards". Unless I'm missing something

Ill summarize the response of broader community :

Suspicious, wary.

and rightly so too. look at what happened to all those who got affiliated with microsoft in any way.

microsoft has huge negative karma to alleviate.

Re:A better sponsorship

Couldn't the same argument be used in reverse -- quit developing for KDE/GNOME, Windows already dominates, develop for that?

Oh, that's right -- monoculture is ok so long as its your monoculture.

Re:A better sponsorship

Well to use an analogy, if Apache and IIS were car companies, one is manufacturing cars that get 200 MPG, with keyless entry security systems that are highly customizable and can be purchased for $10. The other company makes a car that runs on baby kittens, can be hijacked everytime you go under 30 MPH (and whose top speed is 35 MPH) and can be purchased for $100,000.

Who do you think deserves the market in this case?

Re:

If market share were determined by who deserved it, we'd have non-profit pharmas, home-based rapid-production kits, and most "work" would be a thing of the past.

However, the future will probably be more like Minority Report than Star Trek.

Re:A better sponsorship

You know, you might want to do some research and rethink your view on the security aspect of IIS and Apache - since version 5, IIS has been impressively secure.

Re:A better sponsorship

Uhh.. no, that's not true at all. Since IIS6 was released in 2003, there hasn't been a single critical security vulnerability in IIS. Not one.

The same can't be said for Apache.

Re:

While I agree IIS security has improve dramatically, you might want to do your own research when you claim that there are no critical security vulnerabilities.

http://secunia.com/product/1438/?task=advisories [secunia.com]

There are two remote system compromise vulnerabilities listed there.

Re:

You wouldn't blame a php flaw on Apache so why blame an ASP flaw on IIS?

Re:A better sponsorship

I sure as hell hope not, I cannot begin to list all the advantages of running IIS+.NET on Server 2003 over [insert language] and mod_whatever on Apache. Having to muck around with httpd.conf and chmod wouldn't exactly be an improvement over their current stack, especially for intra-corp applications.

(I realize the above paragraph might hurt some fanboys - sorry. You can have your platform, I recognize its strengths. Just leave mine alone)

This is probably part of Microsoft's push to make things like PHP and Ruby work better on Windows. After all, they'd rather you run WAMP than LAMP. They've been engaged with Zend on the FastGCI implementation for IIS that makes PHP so much better on Windows. I don't think they see IIS as some sacred cow to be protected. Again, as long as you're running everything on Windows Server =)

Re:A better sponsorship

I cannot begin to list all the advantages of running IIS+.NET on Server 2003 over [insert language] and mod_whatever on Apache.

Yeah, I can't list any advantages, either.

Re:

Never had a problem with it, it works as advertised. I like my security to be slightly more granular though, which is why I'd rather have ACLs on NT.

This is for internal corporate applications though, irrelevant in the context of where I'd run my blog or picture gallery.

Re:

Well that is true in a world of closed source code but not in the open source world where security reviewers and amateurs are always looking at your code. When the whole world has access to your code all the time, you always have to be improving it and working on it.

When it is closed (such as IE was) you can sit on it and not develop for years. Keeping things open causes more people to force you to stay on your game or else they will eventually fork it. Thats kind of what happened with Mozilla and Firefo

Re:

Uhh.. you really have no idea what you're talking about. First, MFC is a library, C# is a language. Second, C# was developed by Anders Hjelberg, who Microsoft hired away from Borland. He's the guy that basically wrote Delphi. And no, he did not create MFC.

Re:

Congratulations. You're not only incoherent, you've obviously copy-and-pasted "smart quotes" that came out of Microsoft Word somewhere. Ick.