Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *Apache community when recently IDC confirmed that *Apache accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *Apache has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *Apache is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict *Apache's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *Apache faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *Apache because *Apache is dying. Things are looking very bad for *Apache. As many of us are already aware, *Apache continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeApache is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeApache developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeApache is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenApache leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenApache. How many users of NetApache are there? Let's see. The number of OpenApache versus NetApache posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetApache users. Apache/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetApache posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Apache/OS. A recent article put FreeApache at about 80 percent of the *Apache market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeApache users. This is consistent with the number of FreeApache Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeApache went out of business and was taken over by ApacheI who sell another troubled OS. Now ApacheI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *Apache has steadily declined in market share. *Apache is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *Apache is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *Apache continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *Apache is dead.

Fact: *Apache is dead