Open-source project aims to outpark Microsoft

IDG News Service - Hoping to counter the public perception that the open-source Apache Web server is losing ground to Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Information Server (IIS), Linux advocate Bruce Perens has launched a free domain-parking service.

Launched last week, OpenSourceParking.com offered users a free place to "park" their unused Web domains. By parking Web sites that have been registered but not yet put into use, Perens hopes to boost Apache's market-share numbers.

Instead of returning an error message, Web sites that have been parked return a page indicating that the site has been registered, but is not yet operational. These parked pages often include advertisements, generating revenue for the service provider that has parked them.

Last month, domain registrar GoDaddy.com Inc. migrated 4.5 million such domains from servers running Apache to those based on IIS, a move that contributed to Apache's 5.9% drop in market share, according to the most recent Web server usage numbers reported by Netcraft Ltd.

This drop in market share may give some IT managers the false impression that IIS is making gains on Apache, said Perens, vice president of professional services at open-source vendor SourceLabs Inc.

"Microsoft is going to take this figure and say, 'Five percent of all Web servers switched from Apache to Microsoft IIS; why isn't your server doing so?'" Perens said. "So rather than sit every manager in the world down and explain the real backstory ... I would just say, 'Let's take some wind out of Microsoft's sails.'"

To date, however, Apache -- and not IIS -- has received the biggest market-share boost from parked domains, according to Rich Miller, a Netcraft analyst, who said in a recent blog posting that more domain-parking services use Apache software than IIS.

GoDaddy is the second major registrar to shift its services to Microsoft's products, following eNom Inc. Other major registrars, including Network Solutions Inc., Dotster Inc. and Register.com Inc. do not use Microsoft's software, Miller said.

When Netcraft's most recent server numbers were adjusted to include only active domains, Apache still saw its market share drop, although by a smaller percentage. Netcraft's "active" number for April show that Apache had a market share of 64.9%, down 2.3% from the previous month. Microsoft's IIS was running on 26% of Web servers, up nearly 1% during the same period.