Microsoft makes pledges to support Apache, PHP, Ruby

[Administrator]

Â*Like Dana, I was surprised to hear of Microsoft’s decision to become a platinum sponsor of the Apache Software Foundation, announced at OSCON late last week.

It wasn’t the only announcement.Â* The Redmond, Wash based Windows giant also shared that it would make a contribution to the PHP community’s ADOdb project — which will expand support for Microsoft SQL Server.Â*Â*This will enable customers to deploy more PHP applications on Microsoft’s database.Â*

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What else?Â* Microsoft pledged to extend its Open Specification promise to open upÂ*more than 150 additional protocols in Windows Server, Â*the .NET framework and other products.

Microsoft also announced a series ofÂ*IronRuby updates. These include plans toÂ*ship the Ruby libraries implemented in the Ruby programming language with theÂ*IronRuby distribution and participate in theÂ*RubySpec project.Â*

It’s not clear if Microsoft would have taken these steps if chairman and co-founder Bill Gates was still around. Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that Microsoft’s increasing participation in such projects is a big win forÂ*the open source community andÂ*for its customers. Â*

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