Look Who Gave Money to Apache

August 1st, 2008 by Phil Hughes

Your rating: None Average: 1.5 (2 votes)
ASF seems to have a new member to the tune of at least $100,000/year. Who? None other than Microsoft. The information is in Sam Ramji's blog. Who? "Sam Ramji is the Senior Director of Platform Strategy leading Microsoft’s platform strategy efforts across the company, including long-term strategic planning in the Windows Server and Tools organization.

Now, do we believe this?

It is not a move away from IIS as Microsoft’s strategic web server technology. We have invested significantly in refactoring and adding new, state-of-the-art features to IIS, including support for PHP. We will continue to invest in IIS for the long term and are currently under way with development of IIS 8.
__________________________

Phil Hughes


Special Magazine Offer -- Free Gift with Subscription
Receive a free digital copy of Linux Journal's System Administration Special Edition as well as instant online access to current and past issues. CLICK HERE for offer

Linux Journal: delivering readers the advice and inspiration they need to get the most out of their Linux systems since 1994.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
goblin's picture

Extension of the Apache POI support

On August 4th, 2008 goblin says:

The Apache support from Microsoft can be seen as an extension of the support MS gave to the Apache POI project.

I came across this theory about the reasons for Microsofts support of a competitor like Apache:
http://fussnotes.typepad.com/plexnex/2008/03/interpreting-mi.html
"The key is that going forward, they won't have to document or define eXtensions that connect MSOffice information to MS Server Stack business processes. With ISO approval, MSOffice becomes a standards compliant "editor" for the MS Cloud and ecosystem of web application - web services developers. Expanding this ecosystem to capture the Apache developer community, so that they too are bound into the MSOffice editor - MS Server Stack, is probably the fruit of their surprising support for Apache POI."

I think Microsoft invest in organizations/companies that are important to them. If memory serves, they invested in ActiveState a few years back to "port" Perl to the Windows Server platforms, which wasn't such a bad thing, really. Also, remember that there's a lot more going on at ASF than the upkeep of the Apache Web Server. Still ... it is very interesting ...

__________________________

Paul Barry

theillien's picture

I'm not too concerned about this

On August 1st, 2008 theillien says:

While I've always supported Linux over MS in my time with technology, I'm pragmatic in my support.

Yes, IIS is crap. Yes, in the past these moves have been grounds for speculation as to the motives. However, in the past five years, FOSS has gained enough momentum on the Enterprise level to make make MS realize that changes need to be made on their end. These changes are not going to be sweeping and immediate (especially while Balder...er...Ballmer) is still on board but they are going to change. This is a work of evolution, not creation-ism.

-Mathew

Post new comment

Please note that comments may not appear immediately, so there is no need to repost your comment.
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <pre> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <i> <b>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

Newsletter

Each week Linux Journal editors will tell you what's hot in the world of Linux. You will receive late breaking news, technical tips and tricks, and links to in-depth stories featured on www.linuxjournal.com.
Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Tech Tip Videos

From the Magazine

July 2009, #183

News Flash: Linux Kernel 3.0 to include an on-the-go Expresso machine interface! Ok, maybe not, but Linux is definitely going mobile, from phones to e-readers. Find out more inside about Android, the Kindle 2, the Western Digital MyBook II, The Bug, and Indamixx (a portable recording studio). And if you've gone mobile and you been wanting more Emacs in your life then check out Conkeror.


To compliment the mobile we've got the stationary: parsing command line options with getopt, checking your Ruby code with metric_fu, and building a secure Squid proxy. How is this stationary you ask? What can we say? It's not. We just wanted to see if anybody actually read this part of the page :) .


All this and more, and all you have to do is get your hot sweaty hands on the latest copy of Linux Journal.





Read this issue