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Look Who Gave Money to Apache

Aug 01, 2008  By Phil Hughes
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.
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Phil Hughes

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Extension of the Apache POI support

goblin's picture
Submitted by goblin on Mon, 08/04/2008 - 04:12.

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."

Flying pigs ... Frozen hell ... Money from MS??

barryp's picture
Submitted by barryp on Fri, 08/01/2008 - 12:07.

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

I'm not too concerned about this

theillien's picture
Submitted by theillien on Fri, 08/01/2008 - 09:01.

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