Microsoft promises to extend ASP.NET to Apache and .NET to other OS's... in 2002

Before continuing on to read my blog post, please check out the article from 2002 . Remember that back in 2002, the .NET Framework was 1.0, it was no longer in beta, but it was certainly not enjoying the same kind of traction that it enjoys today. ASP.NET was in its infancy and was struggling with a lot of problems, including performance and integration with non-Microsoft products (like allowing connections to the Oracle server).

Some assertions from this article that I find fascinating are:

• Microsoft will allow .NET to connect to Oracle.
  Well, this was good news for all of us who were working in shops with huge investments in Oracle and wanted our employers to consider switching the rest of the infrastructure to .NET. Without this, .NET probably would not have gained anywhere near the amount of market share it has now.
• ASP.NET will extend to the Apache server.
  You know this was such a ridiculous assertion that I had almost completely forgotten that Microsoft had ever suggested it. I remember back in the good old days when we were all trying to convince our bosses that .NET was as awesome as we thought it was, one of our big selling points was the fact that while it only worked on Microsoft operating systems at the time, it was fully portable and would eventually show up on Linux. We all know how this one turned out... 6 years later and there isn't a single copy of Apache running a Microsoft-build version of ASP.NET in the wild.
• .NET will be extended to other Operating Systems.
  Again, we know how this one turned out too. In the six years since this article, Microsoft has not produced a viable copy of the .NET Framework that works on anything other than Windows. In fact, as time has gone on, various aspects of the .NET core libraries have become increasingly dependent on features and functionality available in Windows. The only people who have managed to get .NET working on non-Microsoft operating systems are the amazing people with the Mono project. And, as a side note, Mono wouldn't be where it is today without the backing of Novell.

So let this be a lesson to you kiddies, just because Microsoft says they're going to do something doesn't mean they're really going to do it :)

The really funny part of this is that I was googling around for information on ASP.NET and accidentally stumbled upon this article. When I read that Microsoft was going to announce shortly that they would be extending ASP.NET to Apache, I nearly squealed with joy... then I read the timestamp on the article. Damn you Google and your date-insensitive relevance algorithm!! Crap from 6 years ago should be completely irrelevant, or at least page 2 material :)

tags: microsoft  aspnet  history  apache  oracle  iis  

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