Apache Now the Leader in SSL Servers (Netcraft) [LWN.net]

Netcraft has announced that Apache just passed Microsoft's Internet Information Server as the most popular server for SSL sites. "Version 1 of Apache did not include SSL support: in the 1990s, US export controls, and the patent on the RSA algorithm in the US, meant that cryptographic support for open source projects had to be developed outside of the US, and were distributed separately. Several independent projects provided SSL support for Apache, including Apache-SSL and mod_ssl; but commercial spin-offs, like Stronghold by c2net (later bought by Red Hat), were more popular at that time. Now that mod_ssl is included as standard in version 2, Apache has become more popular for hosting secure websites." This announcement contrasts the Netcraft April 2006 Web Server Survey, covered on LWN, in which the statistics were skewed toward IIS by inactive domain parking activities.

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Explains the Motivation?

Posted Apr 29, 2006 0:11 UTC (Sat) by AnswerGuy (guest, #1256) [Link]

So, last month's Netcraft brewed tempest in a teapot suggested that Microsoft may have spent significant amounts of money and energy to "gain marketshare" by providing incentives for large hosting companies to use IIS to serve parked domains.

If that's true, then it would have an effort that might have taken a few months to gel.

Meanwhile the graph trend lines for recent months (IIS SSL decline vs. Apache SSL growth) look almost linear and seem to have inverse slopes. In other worths a casual glance at the graph suggests that Apache was gaining about one SSL site for each one that ISS was losing.

Anyone looking at that graph over the last six months or possibly even a year could easily extrapolate to predict within a month or two when those lines were likely to cross.

Perhaps all of this alleged effort and expense by MS to inflated their overall growth/market share numbers could be an attempt to take the sting out of this little gem here.

(In the long run any domain parking incentives could turn into an ongoing cost ... GoDaddy and friends move every parked domain back over to Apache every time the incentives contracts expire ... or just use the possibility as a bargaining chip to "earn" another go at the trough when their contracts are set to expire).

JimD