An interesting idea, but I am not sure how this really is aimed at Microsoft specifically? Granted, it does involve them to some extent, but it’s a domain parking issue for goodness sake!

Hoping to counter the public perception that the open-source Apache Web server is losing ground to Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS), Linux advocate Bruce Perens has launched a free domain-parking service.

Launched last week, the OpenSourceParking.com offered users a free place to “park” their unused Web domains. By parking Web sites that have been registered, but not yet put into use, Perens hopes to boost Apache’s market share numbers.

Instead of returning an error message, Web sites that have been parked return a page indicating that the site has been registered, but is not yet operational. Often these parked pages include advertisements, generating revenue for the service provider that has parked them.

Last month domain registrar GoDaddy.com migrated 4.5 million such domains from servers running Apache to those based on IIS, a move that contributed to Apache’s 5.9 percent drop in market share, according to the most recent Web server usage numbers reported by Netcraft.

This drop in market share may give some IT managers the false impression that IIS is making gains on Apache, said Perens, vice president of professional services with open-source vendor Sourcelabs. Source: InfoWorld

[tags]servers,domains,apache,open-source projects,opensourceparking.com[/tags]