Microsoft-owned email service runs on FreeBSD, Apache

It's quiz time - why does Hotmail use Apache? Hotmail is the free email service owned by Microsoft, so why isn't it using IIS?

It's a good question, and there's an easy answer: Microsoft would desperately like to run Hotmail with NT/IIS but when it tried to switch over, it failed. And if Microsoft cannot get NT to scale, nobody can. Hotmail runs off FreeBSD, is on version 1.2.1 of Apache - and runs on - Solaris servers. Another factoid is that Microsoft is a web site management customer of Exodus Communications (CEO Ellen Hancock, late of IBM and Apple - where she was CTO until Gil Amelio, er, left).

All this rather undermines the arguments that Microsoft's research collaborator Mindcraft has been using about the superiority of NT over free software, and Microsoft's own claims that NT is ready for the enterprise.

It would be putting salt in the open wound to point out that in March, according to Netcraft, Apache's server share continued climbing (to 55 per cent), that Microsoft's fell (to 23 per cent, after remaining level for five months), and that Netscape's rose (to 7 per cent). ®