Thought this group would find this article very interesting: Will Open
Source Lose the Battle for the Web?
Synopsis:
This article argues that the shift towards web services has reduced the
attractiveness of the current generation of Open Source web products.
The only solution is for Open Source to adopt a web services
architecture, and fast. Fortunately, there is one at hand, and it's not
dotGNU! Can the Open Sourcers wake up and save the world before it is
too late? Read on to find out.
Many Open Source supporters greeted the news of the Apache setback with
derisive disbelief ("Why would anyone in their right mind switch from
Unix/Apache to Windows/IIS?"), but they miss the point. Those users who
switched from Apache to IIS did so not for the superior HTTP-serving
capabilities, if any, of IIS. That's commodity stuff, and Apache does it
well enough for them not to look further. They switched because they had
begun to look beyond web servers to web services. Right under the
collective nose of the Open Source community, the battleground has
shifted. People need vanilla webservers today like they need Rolodexes
in an age of digital organisers.
IIS, by contrast, isn't just a webserver anymore. It's being positioned
as the vanguard of the .NET server platform. The Microsoft marketing
machine is convincing decision makers that web services are the way to
go, and that .NET is the leading web services delivery platform. Our
low-cost, standard, commodity products were the Maginot line that
Microsoft could not cross, but alas, how easily they have walked around
it. They have turned the "good enough" argument against us. IIS on .NET
is a web services delivery platform, but it's also a "good enough"
webserver, if that's all the customer wants today. Using IIS will
satisfy today's needs as well as tomorrow's!
What would a user rather have -- a free server that does plain
webserving, or a moderately priced one that does webserving plus
e-commerce? Faced with such an adversary, does a plain webserver stand a
chance, much less one that is virtually stagnant? True, the dramatic
drop in Apache's market share comes from just two large ISPs, but will
they be the only ones to switch?
You can find the entire article at:
http://news.wideopen.com/ajb/2-118,209-103,16477905
Scott S. Goodwin
e: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED] | u: http://scottg.net
