2003: Year of Apache 440
John Chamberlain writes "Netcraft's numbers for the new year are in. The trend graphs tell a story: 2003 was the Year of Apache. If Time magazine had a server-of-the-year award the cover would be featuring a feather. Since October 2002 market share has grown from 53% to 64%, a 20% gain while Microsoft IIS, its nearest competitor has shrunk from 36% to 24%, a 33% decline. The change in server totals was even more dramatic. Apache HTTP Server increased from about 20 million to 32 million (+60%) while all other competitors remained flat."
I'm one of those (Score:5, Interesting)
While MS requires patching & monitoring, so does Apache/Linux (although it's not as time-consuming IMO). I also haven't had up-time issues with IIS although I inherently believe Apache would beat IIS in that category.
The true reason is that Apache processes SSI from the outside, while IIS processes them from the inside. I can make more modular code using apache (i.e. a single template for the whole site that the index files link to, and that template links to "content" and "data" files in a given directory). It also seems to perform better, but that's because I was using Access on the IIS machine, and MySQL on the Apache machine. Also Apache/MySQL are cheaper (putting SCO aside).
The only other good reason was to learn something new/different to make myself more marketable.
Makes you wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
Who *are* these guys? (Score:5, Interesting)
normalize for traffic? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder, why... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's big. It's slow. (okay, it can stand a big load without much slowdown, but overall latency is high) It's a system hog. These computers are often older Pentiums, sometimes 486s, sometimes used as clients/terminals, sometimes serving several other tasks.
Why people so rarely use tiny HTTP servers like Boa [boa.org], Mathopd [mathopd.org], thttpd [acme.com]... especially, that those tiny thingies are extremely fast under light load, light on system resources, have most of features every "amateur webmaster" wants, and because of small code base, usually completely bug-free.
Field for "Evangelism"?
Dip in Apache July 2002 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yes, but measuring webserver market share is ha (Score:5, Interesting)
Always helps to actually visit the site. Their methods will favor Apache somewhat, as IIS does not generally play very well in hosting environments with virtual domains for various reasons. Of course that in itself is an indicator of server quality
when we're finished patting ourselves on the back: (Score:5, Interesting)
When we bragg about these numbers, Microsoft respond with:
"Our webserver is used by more Forbes/Fortune 500 companies and is used by more secure websites. Apaches numbers are only high because a lot of amateurs use it".
What is our argument to that? (we don't have one. We just ignore it and continue patting ourselves on the back.)
If we are to progress, it's better to look at what going *wrong*, and try to improve that.
Re:Yes, but measuring webserver market share is ha (Score:5, Interesting)
Even then, how do you count them? How many machines are running any given web site? My sites currently have 8 servers behind a pair of load balancers. But it appears to the outside world as if it's a single machine. Also, do you consider all servers equal? Should my personal site be given equal weight with my company's banking sites? I'd be interested to see a weighted graph so that sites with more traffic have a greater impact. But the problem with that is, how do you measure it?
As an aside, I'm getting mildly concerned about Apache's market share. Not because I don't like it -- I do, and run both personal and corporate sites with it. But I distrust software monocultures, and I fear Apache's heading that way. So I hope that Apache gets some viable competition. I also hope, however, that it comes from somewhere that isn't intent on displacing it with proprietary, incompatible servers. So that'd be something other than IIS, then...
Me too (Score:4, Interesting)
Our MD was so impressed with the port (which was very trivial), that she's asked me to consider migrating our main in-house server to Linux too - it's mainly a 'file and print' box so this should be a piece of cake.
We WERE looking at a contact management system (possibly Maximizer or Goldmine), but now we're seriously considering an open source alteratives-should save us about 7000UKP in apps and licences.
Netcraft confirms it... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Viruses, Worms, and Exploits Are... Where? (Score:4, Interesting)
If 2003 was the Year of Apache, then 2004 will be the Year of the LAMP [uoregon.edu].
Apache is so good, it is actually hurting itself (Score:3, Interesting)
Enough said
Sunny Dubey
Re:I'm one of those (Score:4, Interesting)
Bryan
Apache 2.0 (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically when the server went to 2.0.x, the rest of the supporting community wasn't ready. Most of it is still in testing mode. The 1.3.x branch is "good enough", and it doesn't break stuff. 2.0 is good, but it breaks stuff.
Another way to look at it is that my company ships product based upon 1.3.x. Moving to 2.0.x would require several things which don't yet exist. As we are happily operating under 1.3.x, we have no reason to move. If the Apache folks decide to completely abandon 1.3.x, thats OK as we have source and can fix it as needed.
I suspect that most folks will stay with 1.3.x for the forseeable future. The 2.0.x migration will cause more headache than it is worth, and it will cost money/time.
Read the same headline on Kuro5hin! (Score:2, Interesting)
Kind of reminiscent of the time when Time and Newsweek ran identical cover stories on Bruce Springsteen.
Proxying firewalls skew NetCraft numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
With the combination of URLScan header removal and a Unix-based firewall (few folks are insane enough to put up IIS webservers and Windows Firewalls on the same network...) my IIS5/6 hosts don't look anything like a Windows box as far as Netcraft is concerned.
Throw in a hardware load balancer doing SSL offloading, and the client connections are never going to see my hosts directly for Netcraft to count.
Re:when we're finished patting ourselves on the ba (Score:1, Interesting)
I agree that we have to find out what we're doing wrong, but I can't see Fortune 500 company adoption as a huge indicator of doing things right. They're dinosaurs run by dinosaurs and I rather strongly suspect that many of the current Fortune 500 companies will die off in the next decade.
Re:Makes you wonder (Score:3, Interesting)
With Apache, it was upfront that it required a bit more tweaking to get it to work. But changing a few config files didn't really take a lot of time. While the .NET/IIS version installed without much intervention, it was difficult to figure out how to cofigure IIS even though it was the same setup as Apache.
There were three major factors in our decision. Ultimately we went with Apache mostly because the J2EE web services worked so much better than .NET. That was the software makers design choices not ours. Cost was not an issue with us because we already had Windows 2000 Server. For a mom and pop places, I don't know how they would get IIS without Server. For Apache, it doesn't matter since it will work on client or server versions. The last factor considered was, at that time, there happened to be major exploits of IIS in the news.
So? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, there is a segment of the market that uses IIS more than Apache. Should we argue with that? Why?
Now, despite all those "amateurs" that are putting Apache on the Internet, Apache still has fewer worms, exploits, etc than IIS.
Which tells you that all those "amateurs" are:
#1. Better qualified than those non-amateurs running IIS.
#2. Running a better product.
or
#3. Just plain lucky, over and over and over again.
Re:Also a win for FreeBSD (Score:1, Interesting)
Secondly, you can find better commercial support.
Thirdly, many Linux distro releases are supported with fixes and updates for much longer than FreeBSD. Each FreeBSD version (x.x) has 12 months of fixes from the security team; in contrast, Debian has about two years and RHEL offer a huge 5 years. When you're managing loads of servers, it's much easier than upgrading each machine's OS every 12 months and re-testing your custom software.
FreeBSD is great, but those are some reasons why Linux is chosen, and they matter to a lot of folks!
ServerSide java had a good year too (Score:1, Interesting)
Tomcat which is developed by Apache
Apache's J2EE Jeranamo Server is coming out end of this year.
Re:It's tricky, alright (Score:4, Interesting)
Apache from 22M to 31M (40%)
Jetty from 1150 to 3731 (324%)
Resin from 24224 to 57113 (235%)
vs. Closed source ones:
IIS from 9.7M to 9.6M (-0.1%)
Lotus-Domino from 78k to 86k (10%)
Oracle from 6629 to 8167 (23%)
Weblogic from 5344 to 7844 (46%)
It looks like
a. The big boys have a trend that is slower than the small ones
b. Open source grows a lot faster.
That says a lot about the dynamic of open source webservers in general, and probably all open source tools to some degree.
Sends binary files as text/plain MIME type (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's tricky, alright (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets say I make the Jellomizer Web Server and I install it as my own webserver.
then next year I got 5 clients to install it.
Wow thats a 500% growth. Amazing!
Now if I had 100 installed and I got 5 more people that is only a 5% growth. So growth will be faster when you have smaller numbers.
Re:It's tricky, alright (Score:3, Interesting)
I still don't understand why a majority of webservers I have found around were configured as Apache+Tomcat, and they would only have static content and a couple of servlets/JSP. What's he point of putting an Apache on the front end in this case?
Anyways, maybe I should switch to something else...
Re:Yes, but measuring webserver market share is ha (Score:3, Interesting)
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
-Thomas Jefferson 1816
Re:It's tricky, alright (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Apache 2 runs well on Windows (Score:2, Interesting)
PHP is running my webmail just fine on my 2.x server on Linux (uptime.netcraft.com is Slashdotted so can't give a link)
Bob
Lies, damm lies and statistics. (Score:3, Interesting)
If raw counts of usages indicate quality, then MSIE would be the highest quality web browser by a factor of around 20 (something 95% market share right?). Outlook would be the best mail/PIM software. /. readers would disagree with such a statement. So why do we accept conclusions based the same type of logic based on stats from netcraft?
What "we" need is something like some the stock market indicators. [the good ones] are not just a raw sum of all the stocks out there, or all the stocks traded on a given market. There a collection of hand picked stocks. I suspect the specific criteria for being included are secret, but long term stability is almost definitly an important peice of the pie. There not using penny stocks, just IPOd companies, companies in trouble, or companies experiencing isolated/unique growth.
What I propose for someone to do, is to develop such a system for HTTP server usage. Build a list of say, 5000, sites. The sites should be distributed accross all topics, all markets. It should include sites run by non-IT centric companies, IT companies that are primarly "brick and mortar" and web-only companies as well. It should include scanning web hosting companies, colo housed sites, sites run off 56k modems. What they have in common is that they all have some level of longevity (if not stability).
Re:when we're finished patting ourselves on the ba (Score:3, Interesting)
If Microsoft are trying to sell it on the basis of "big professional companies use IIS", it doesn't really work for me. I'm interested in what sites like Amazon, Google, the BBC, Tesco, Natwest, BT, British Airways and the IMDB run on. Stuff that either gets a lot of traffic, has to be secure or both.
I don't have a list of the Forbes 500, but I've had a look at the FTSE 100 in the UK, and a great deal of those companies don't have what I'd call major websites - their businesses don't depend on high traffic. There are companies involved in Biotech, Construction, Mining and Food production.
Re:when we're finished patting ourselves on the ba (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, IIS is used by many Fortune 500 companies, but so is Apache. My largest client "uses" IIS for a small vendor supplied internal application (so MS$ counts it as an IIS site). But 99% of internal and external web pages are served from Apache.
Why 1.3, not 2.0? (Score:2, Interesting)
Speaking as a member of the Apache HTTP Server project, I am curious - why aren't you moving to Apache 2.0?
well (Score:2, Interesting)
it's complicated, but in a good way, and to configure it, you may have to sit there for an hour scrolling along, playing around with the options, but once you get it going, it works, and is stable.
not to mention a lot of the 3rd gui configurators are easier to understand than IIS, and give more options that give you total control of your webserver. the percentage that doesnt use apache are either afraid of it, think it's too hard, dont care, unwilling windows users that have it enabled by default, or companies that have CEO's that are tied by the balls to bill gates' finger.
Re:TCO (Score:3, Interesting)
'Cause we all know competition is a bad thing, right?
I think perhaps he meant that http server is becoming a commodity. Study up on product life-cycles as it relates to commoditization.
This [infocomm.org] might help.
Re:Yes, but measuring webserver market share is ha (Score:3, Interesting)
That isn't what I was doing. I was employing a rhetorical device to draw your attention to the fact that a great many such servers also exist, and they provide a more of a problem than they do a solution.
There are authentication tools that IIS brings to the table that makes them really attractive in the intranet server market (like being able to obtain domain login information.
You mean domain in the peculiar Microsoft sense of the term, right? I can see how IIS might offer some embrace and extend-style additions to try and tie people in to their OS as well, yeah.