Microsoft Sponsors the Apache Foundation

Microsoft is sponsoring the Apache foundation and I am indeed impressed:

Microsoft is becoming a platinum member of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), paying $100,000 annual membership.

Now one could take the cynical approach that it is yet more lip service from Microsoft about being “open” without actually being open (and really, a hundred grand is pocket change to MS) but I like to think this could be the start of something good. Especially given this statement:

Ramji, who made the announcements at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) Friday, promised “a lot more” PHP patches in the coming months now Microsoft had established processes he said clarified how employees can contribute to open source.
…
The decision to work on PHP fits with the overall strategy of improving the language’s interoperability with Windows and stemming the loss of PHP application deployments to Linux. LGPL allows code to be used with proprietary programs – such as SQL Server – unlike its GPL cousin.

(The word from the Apache Foundation itself.)

I had no idea Microsoft was even interested in PHP much less in a position to contribute patches. A quick googling suggests that this is not a new development so I suppose my surprise is a function of not paying much attention to web development on the Windows platform.

Regardless, PHP is the dominant web language and anything (and anyone) who helps improve PHP, regardless of platform, helps us all.

PHP, IronRuby… Microsoft, I feel like I hardly know you.