As we reported last week (CI No 3,435), IBM has confirmed that it will be an active partner in the Apache Group’s HTTP server project. IBM will also be bundling Apache with the application server component of its WebSphere e-commerce environment. The bundle will be available at the end of June. The WebSphere Performance Pack is available now with load balancing, caching proxy server and enterprise file system (CI No 3,404). A set of tools, also part of WebSphere, is due late in 1998. Until those tools are released, IBM is supporting NetObjects development tools including SiteBuilder, Fusion and TeamFusion. Apache is open source software developed by a community centered around Brian Behlendorf, chief technology officer of Organic Online. At the beginning of 1995, Behlendorf was the webmaster for Wired magazine. He had developed a set of patches for the web server published by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Netscape had hired away many key NCSA staff and the server was not being kept up to date. Behlendorf and some of his colleagues agreed to publish their own NCSA web server distribution, balancing the commercial interests of each of the developers involved with the greater good of the code. Participants agree that IBM’s endorsement of the Apache project is a key milestone in corporate acceptance of the open source software model. We feel that this is the first time a big company has put its foot and its face behind open source software, Behlendorf says.
