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?

[Johnny_Law]

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

Microsoft Support of OSS

[iamhigh]

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?

How to interpret this.

[jskline]

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?

Re:A better sponsorship

[bsDaemon]

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

[Ambiguous Puzuma]

A better sponsorship would be to quit developing IIS and focus all of its development staff on Apache for Windows, and Apache in general. Apache already dominates, make it better.

Doesn't that run counter to the idea that monoculture is bad in computing?

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

[porkThreeWays]

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.

Developer, developer, developer....!

[judethecutedude]

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 :

[unity100]

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

[bsDaemon]

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

[Foofoobar]

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 Firefox; Mozilla wasn't really doing things right so Firefox was created. Lucky for them he was willing to work WITH them.

Re:It begins

[unity100]

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.

Re:Microsoft Support of OSS

[iamhigh]

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!

Re:A better sponsorship

[dedazo]

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:A better sponsorship

[man_of_mr_e]

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:A better sponsorship

[phoenix.bam!]

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