Well, getting influenced more than anything else

Feb 29, 2008 17:04 GMT  ·  By

Sam Ramji, Director, Open Source Software Lab, admitted the fact that Microsoft had been "stealing" from open source when building Windows Server 2008. Well, the fact of the matter is that stealing is a rather harsh term, which explains the inverted commas. Ramji only stated that open source solutions have influenced the creation of Windows Server 2008. Open Source software characteristics such as Modular architectures, Programming language agnostic, Feedback-driven development, Built-for-purpose systems, Sysadmins who write code and Standards-based communication have all been applied to the development of Windows Server 2008. Microsoft has essentially adopted some of the open source development processes for its latest Windows Server operating system.

"Modular architectures was applied in multiple areas, but the one that stands out most to me is Internet Information Server 7 (IIS7). IIS7 has been rearchitected for flexibility as 40 individual modules, enable more to be written by community developers or delivered as out-of-band releases. This has already enabled performance improvements and independent evolution, and I expect to see further enhancements. Programming language agnostic is something we've delivered on with support for PHP on IIS7 and the enhancements to FastCGI (which can be used by any of the P* languages). We set a goal of having PHP certified on Windows Server 2008, and we've achieved that. We'll continue to improve runtime, security, and manageability support for non-.NET languages and the applications that are built on them, as well as testing the full stacks of PHP-based applications running on Windows Server, IIS, and SQL Server," Ramji explained.

But Microsoft has not only integrated open source development practices into Windows Server 2008, but also in additional products. The feedback-driven building strategy, for example, was used for both Windows Vista SP1 and Windows XP SP3. But when it comes down to Windows Server 2008, input from developer and customer trials managed to influence the creation of a range of "feature completion" developments, with the role of bundling different components. And just as is the case with Linux applications, Windows Server 2008 can be tailored to a unique role and nothing more. The built-for-purpose systems practice led to the flexibility offered via the wizard-driven configuration based on the Windows Server Core.

"Sysadmins who write code are first-class citizens in the PowerShell-driven infrastructure. We've increased Windows administrators' opportunity to master the full surface area of WMI and demonstrate that mastery in reusable, low-level scripts. As we evolve this to support multiple language bindings and bash aliasing, this should become a comfortable home for highly skilled sysadmins," Ramji added. "Standards-based communication such as in CardSpace (with support for X.509, SAML, Kerberos tokens, and more) and the Web Services stack (not only are all 38 Web Services standard under the Open Specification promise, but our implementations have achieved a high level of interop with Apache's Axis web services stack), and beta support for emerging standards like Xen virtualization represent a small subset of the standards built into Windows Server 2008."