To open-source code, express goodwill. Why does Microsoft support Apache?

To open-source code, express goodwill. Why does Microsoft support Apache? -- Linux Enterprise Application-Linux server application information. For details, refer to the following section. Microsoft is seen as a major enemy of the open source code movement, but today the software giant has begun funding the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), which has spared no efforts to support open source ).

Sam Ramji, Senior Manager of Microsoft platform strategy, said: Microsoft will become a sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation, which allows the foundation to pay salaries to administrative staff and other staff, so that ASF developers can focus on well-written software.

Ramji made the above announcement in a speech at the Open Source Convention last Friday. He also pointed out that Microsoft Port 25 blog will also support Apache. Apache still leads Microsoft in the market of network server software, but the Apache Software Foundation hosts many other software development plans.

At first glance, Microsoft sponsored Apache was incredible.

But first, in fact, in recent years, Microsoft has gradually released goodwill to the open-source community.

For example, Microsoft has released its own Open-source community authorization solution, and has incorporated a number of technologies into Microsoft's Open Specification Promise for Open-source community programmers to use. Ramji also said that this commitment also applies to commercial applications of this technology.

Another example is that Microsoft and Zend work closely together to enable Windows to support PHP. PHP is an open source code plan, and its role is to quickly build webpages on servers.

PHP is usually used together with other open-source components, such as Linux and Apache Web server software (used for Web page creation), and MySQL database software (used to store the information required to build Web page components ). In fact, these four types of software have very high usage, so some people call them LAMP.

In addition, there is also the concept of WISP, that is, Microsoft's own components: Windows, Internet Information Services for a Web server, and SQL Server for the database. Microsoft released an ADOdb update last Friday for PHP to access the SQL Server database.

The second is Apache License, which regulates various projects of the Foundation. Microsoft's previous criticism of open-source software mainly aimed at General Public License (GPL ). GPL has a reciprocal clause: If you have modified a certain GPL software and released a software version that adopts that modification, you must share the modification results in accordance with the GPL specification.

In other words, Apache License allows program designers to combine open-source software with exclusive software in any way without the obligation to share it. This is why IBM uses Apache Web server software in its exclusive WebSphere product.

For Microsoft, this means that Apache plans can be used within Microsoft. This is exactly what interests Microsoft.

The third point is that the Apache Software Foundation has its influence. Today, Apache manages dozens of software programs, including those that Microsoft may be interested in, such as Hadoop. This can be said to be an open-source Google MapReduce algorithm, it is used to help process massive data sets ). Yahoo is involved in expanding Hadoop and adopting this program on its own website.

If Microsoft does not sponsor Apache, no one can prevent Microsoft from using Hadoop or other Apache plans. However, funding is more suitable for political and pragmatic considerations. (Stephen Shankland)

Source: cnet