The single biggest distributor of Drupal just might be Microsoft. As I discovered from Dries Buytaert's blog on Wednesday, Microsoft's Web Application Installer comes with out-of-the-box support for Drupal, OScommerce, and other popular open-source Web applications.
The Web Application Installer Beta is designed to help get you up and running with the most widely used Web applications freely available for your Windows Server. Web AI provides support for popular ASP.net and PHP Web applications, including Graffiti, DotNetNuke, WordPress, Drupal, OSCommerce, and more.
With just a few simple clicks, Web AI will check your machine for the necessary prerequisites, download these applications from their source location in the community, walk you through basic configuration items, and then install them on your computer.
While this doesn't technically make Microsoft a distributor of these open-source "bits," it comes pretty darn close, and it arguably puts Microsoft on the legal hook for this open-source code. I personally think that's a safe bet, but then, I don't work for Microsoft, a company whose CEO has called open-source code like that of Linux a "cancer."
Times change, and so does the rhetoric?
Anyway, it's good to see Microsoft recognizing the obvious: the world's best Web applications don't come from Microsoft. They're open source, and they carry funky labels like "Drupal," "DotNetNuke," and so on.
As new market-share data from Net Applications shows, Google's Chrome got off to a roaring start, and has been coming down to earth lately. In its first few days after release, Google Chrome went as high as 1.16 percent market share, but it started dropping after the euphoria of the announcement died down.
Google Chrome has now settled into a holding pattern around 0.7 percent browser market share.
Cause for alarm? Of course not. Google never intended Chrome to be a one-day-wonder, and I doubt the company is worried about Chrome's market share today. The battle will be won over years, and it will be fought at the developer level against Silverlight and Flash, rather than at the browser level with Firefox and Internet Explorer, and perhaps particularly within the enterprise.
As such, Google doesn't need to win you or me over to Chrome. Its focus is on Web application developers. Once it has those folks optimizing their applications for Chrome, you and I will follow because Chrome will deliver the best experience for working on the Web, rather than simply browsing it.
It's incredible to see all the things that can be done in a browser these days. It's also incredible that we persist in exposing it all through a browser.
I don't know about you, but I don't want my 21st-century software life lived within the ugly vestiges of the 20th century. The browser, for me, is early days with "browsing." Who browses anymore? Who could?
I like the way Google does it on my BlackBerry. Can I access Google Maps, News, etc. in a browser? Yes. But I like having separate icons for them on my BlackBerry. I like to think of them as distinct applications, in other words.
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