Microsoft becomes official Apache sponsor

Microsoft has been hostile to the open source movement in the past but, amid increased pressure from regulators and competitors, we are increasingly seeing the software giant playing nice with the open source community. In the latest such move, Microsoft has announced it is joining the ranks of Google and Yahoo in becoming a platinum sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation and will donate at least $100,000 a year to support the project.

The announcement was made by Microsoft’s director of platform strategy, Sam Ramji, who made it clear that the sponsorship did not mean Microsoft was abandoning IIS as its web server technology. The Redmond giant also noted that it was contributing code to support ADOdb – a database abstraction library for PHP and Python – and has pledged to offer royalty-free specifications for Windows Server and .NET Framework protocols.

With this, Microsoft may be hoping to further ease pressure from regulators who have fined the company more than 1.6 billion Euros over the last five years for failing to make its software more interoperable with rivals.

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Ha Ha Bent Under Pressure Yet Again. Death of closed source software is near :lol:

wtf.. lol.. a company investing and becoming a prime sponsor of a rival product? zomg.. where is this world coming to?? :lol:

I'm having hard time to figure out the reason behind this move.. :\
But good for Apache.

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“PHP is a popular language,” said Sam Ramji, who runs the Open Source Software Lab for Microsoft and is its director of open source technology strategy. He said nearly 80% of PHP projects are developed on Windows but that 80% are deployed on Linux. “If we create great PHP support and we create excitement among PHP developers then there is opportunity for Windows Servers,” Ramji said.

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I guess that should shed a bit of light on it ? Although I'm still a bit confused.

But he was quick to add that the move did not have any bearing on the long-term future of IIS as Microsoft’s strategic Web server technology.

However this statement makes me wonder. One of the best businesses throwing 100,000 with no future visions? Hah, yeah right... We all believe you.

huh? They create support for PHP that are being deployed on Linux server. How that helps IIS?

That shows their moronic strategy. Same was happened in ODF/OOXML case. Microsoft pwning itself :lol:

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huh? They create support for PHP that are being deployed on Linux server. How that helps IIS?

Thats the part I don't get :s . He makes it sound that somehow helping out Apache helps promoting their Web Server through some kind of PR campaign

.

I think its something like this: they sponsor apache, promote PHP thats written mostly on Windows but deployed mostly on Linux (according to them), add support for it on windows, so that even for PHP, people start buying windows not linux.

sounds a bit far fetched, but thats the simplest thing I could come up with

amitava82 said:
huh? They create support for PHP that are being deployed on Linux server. How that helps IIS?

MetalheadGautham said:
I think its something like this: they sponsor apache, promote PHP thats written mostly on Windows but deployed mostly on Linux (according to them), add support for it on windows, so that even for PHP, people start buying windows not linux.

sounds a bit far fetched, but thats the simplest thing I could come up with

Why is it so hard for us to understand why a monopoly would want to have some degree of say on a rival product?

The same has been happening over the past several years. Microsoft has infiltrated into rival open source products to learn and use the technology to build a crappy version of their own proprietory stuff. Have you guys forgotten what one of Bill Gates motto was? It was "Keep your enemies Close" And do you think that any company would just throw 100,000 every year and expect nothing out of it or try to have some control over things? Why are you blinded by the obvious Microsoft tactics to kill competition and creativity alltogether!

Have we so soon forgotten that recently Microsoft got itself into the panel for Maintained ODF? Do you see where they are heading? If you can't beat em' join em, that's what they're doing, slowly infiltrating into each and every segment of opensource, then spread their mine fields filled with patent traps and monopolistic restrictions and kill their rivals.

Microsoft’s deceptive advertising, again.

Does Microsoft think we the Linux and Open Source user base are just a bunch of morons? In the latest advertising campaign of the closed sourced software giant that’s exactly what they are hoping for. Go ahead and check out for yourself. At *www.microsoft.com/opensource they try to make it look like they are all for Open source software. They even have what they call the Hero Pack, fill out a form and they will send you a pack of “open source” tools that will help you become an “Open Source Hero”. What a giant load of crap how does “evaluation copies” of server 2008 and Visual Studio rank as open source software. They are so cheap it’s not even full versions (like I’d use it if it was).
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Also read: Link

Please save your dreams of Microsoft doing good to society and open source. Microsoft is a company and it will not kill it's own existence, no matter how much you're tempted into thinking that Microsoft will become open source or help open source, you're wrong! If Microsoft is making an investment, then it sees money in that stream or wants to kill money eroding them from that stream, it's just common sense, no need to look at it with suspicion or good will, just use common sense. Microsoft is no charity, they want money, and they will try to use every possible stream to make money while ethics are either thrown out of the window or takes a back seat like we've already seen too much of.

Cyrus_the_virus said:
Please save your dreams of Microsoft doing good to society and open source. Microsoft is a company and it will not kill it's own existence, no matter how much you're tempted into thinking that Microsoft will become open source or help open source, you're wrong! If Microsoft is making an investment, then it sees money in that stream or wants to kill money eroding them from that stream, it's just common sense, no need to look at it with suspicion or good will, just use common sense. Microsoft is no charity, they want money, and they will try to use every possible stream to make money while ethics are either thrown out of the window or takes a back seat like we've already seen too much of.

Thats what every company does. We can' expect a company to do charity work fulltime. But as long as the product is competent enuf I haf no problems with it being either oSS or from MS or whatever.

But this deal is interesting.. lets see what the outcome is. I hope to see components of Apache on Windows soon...