Web 2.0 is built on Open Source
Amazon uses Linux. eBay uses Windows Solaris. But what OSs and webservers run Web 2.0? We tested 17 of our favorites and found out. The script is included below to check for yourself.
Update: We’ve fixed the script, and stopped Wordpress eating our quotes. Thanks Rafal!
| Site | Webserver | Operating System | |
 |
|
Linux | |
 |
Apache httpd | Linux | |
 |
Apache httpd 1.3.33 | Linux | |
 |
lighttpd 1.4.13 | Linux | |
 |
lighttpd 1.4.11 | Linux | |
 |
Unknown | Linux | |
 |
Apache httpd 2.0.52 ((Red Hat)) | Linux | |
 |
Apache httpd | Linux | |
 |
Unknown | Linux | |
 |
Apache httpd 2.0.52 | Linux | |
 |
Microsoft IIS webserver 6.0 | Windows (although OS responding is Linux, this is a caching service). | |
 |
lighttpd 1.4.15 | Linux | |
 |
Apache httpd | Linux | |
 |
Apache httpd 2.0.55 ((Ubuntu) DAV/2 PHP/5.1.2) | Linux | |
 |
Mongrel 201.0.1 | Linux | |
 |
Apache httpd | Linux | |
 |
Squid webproxy 2.6.STABLE12 | Unknown (while OS responding is Linux, this is likely a caching service). |
Linux is pretty much it for Web 2.0 startups. Which Linux? Digg tell us they run Debian, it seems MobiTV run Red Hat, but we’re not sure about the rest.
Update: Readers have suggested that behind the web proxy Wikipedia run a mix of Red Hat and Fedora on Apache. And eBay, while using ISAPI, are actually Solaris based.
For the web server, Apache’s still massive but surprisingly LigHTTPd is as popular amongst Web 2.0 startups as it is hard to spell. If you’re wondering, Mongrel is a web server built for Ruby.
Social networking giant MySpace runs Windows, but FaceBook - with better growth, users that are more attractive to advertisers, and a popular Open API anyone can code against (we like Facebook) - runs Linux.
Both Wikipedia and MySpace’s entries are caching services - think Akamai. These proxies show us as Linux boxes in our results, but could be any browser on any OS. Microsoft have put Squid webservers in front of microsoft.com before, giving the same ‘IIS on Linux‘ result we see with MySpace.
To check for yourself, click Applications → Accessories → Terminal and paste the following:
FILE=results.csv
for SITE in www.digg.com www.blip.tv www.trumors.com www.reddit.com www.popsugar.com www.twitter.com www.mobitv.com www.technorati.com del.icio.us www.flickr.com www.myspace.com www.techcrunch.com www.youtube.com www.revver.com www.scribd.com www.photobucket.com www.wikipedia.org
do
echo -n "$SITE," >> $FILE
# Check port 79 and 80 (one closed, one open) cut out the application and OS
# results and create a nice, comma separated version to show mom
sudo nmap -A -O -P0 -p 79-80 $SITE | grep -Eo '^80.*|OS guesses.*' | sed 's/,/ or /g' \
| tr '\n' ',' | sed -e 's/80\/tcp open *http *//' -e 's/OS guesses: //' >> $FILE
echo >> $FILE
done
When complete, open results.csv in your favorite spreadsheet app.
If you’ve ever wondered why a site called VentureCake has so much Linux content, you now have your answer.
At least partially.
Simple moderation policy:
- Contribute something
- Justify your opinion
- Be courteous to others
July 12th, 2007 17:35
Digg is well known for using LAMP; their web server is Apache.
July 12th, 2007 21:27
Too bad none of those sites really add to the open source software they use - I mean I’d love to see some of those sites release a milder version of their site code/system for open source users to mess around, modify and contribute to. Alas it’s all take and no give.
Ed:For what it’s worth, I agree completely.
July 12th, 2007 22:52
¿Que SO usan las Web2.0? ¿Linux o Windows?…
Un buen listado de el sistema operativo utilizado por algunas Web 2.0 populares….
July 12th, 2007 22:53
@Mavi
It’s been my experience that the community as a whole is something like 95% users and less than 5% contributors/volunteers. Which is fine, that’s really the way freedom works, you are not required to do anything.
That said, more contribution in general is always nice. I think it’s more a point of continued advocacy, making sure your contributing what you can and gently pushing people to help with the community overall in any way they can.
July 13th, 2007 01:05
Mavi thats a great idea for both publishers and users but for some reason I doubt it will happen for some time to come. Maybe web 3.0.
Someday open source will have a much bigger market share and maybe Microsoft will have two different versions one open and one closed. That would be interesting.
Thanks for listening to my rant from your friends @ http://www.asktheadmin.com Come stop by and participate. We offer free tech support & great tech stories.
July 13th, 2007 01:19
[…] Link here. […]
July 13th, 2007 01:30
[…] Listenin tamamı : VentureCake […]
July 13th, 2007 01:31
Thank you Brian McKenna for reposting exactly what the article said… I was lost…
July 13th, 2007 01:38
[…] VentureCake » Blog Archive » Web 2.0 is built on Open Source : for the record, we’re Apache on Solaris. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. […]
July 13th, 2007 01:54
This is misleading, those sites are running mostly on Apache and Linux but they have been developed custom and application providing those services are not open source.
July 13th, 2007 02:00
Wikipedia runs on LAMP too. The software that runs Wikipedia is called MediaWiki and is open source. Lots of sites (including mine) run it. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki
July 13th, 2007 02:07
SensoryMetrics.com runs on Apache. It supports OpenID and will soon be integrating with Facebook.
July 13th, 2007 02:14
YouTube uses Lighttpd as well (for serving the videos), so no pure Apache setup over there.
July 13th, 2007 02:32
[…] more […]
July 13th, 2007 02:43
Wikimedia runs LAMP - http://dammit.lt/2007/04/29/wikipedia-site-internals-etc-the-workbook/
Rob
July 13th, 2007 02:50
This really shouldn’t be a surprise. LAMP/XAMPP is so popular for a reason.
July 13th, 2007 02:51
According to Wikipedia, most of their servers run Fedora, but some are Red Hat.
July 13th, 2007 02:55
I built my website using open source tools because it was cheap and I was poor. Free was a very compelling price.
gordon
July 13th, 2007 03:01
@Mavi
Facebook does contribute back: see their page on opensource. (I think it’s in the developer’s section)
July 13th, 2007 03:09
The article has no real meaning to it. Web2.0 has nothing to do with the technologies behind it. Hell… Web2.0 has no real meaning behind it.
July 13th, 2007 03:10
Wikipedia uses Linux + Apache + lighttpd for static content. See http://dammit.lt/uc/workbook2007.pdf
July 13th, 2007 03:15
You can check out Wikipedia (and all of Wikimedia… who owns, powers, and hosts Wikipedia)’s servers at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers .
It’s all Linux of various distros, primarily Fedora Core, with one Solaris 10 system as the exception.
July 13th, 2007 03:56
How do you use the script? Is the script to be used on your local workstation? I’m running Windows XP.
Ed:The script’s for Linux - if any Windows folk want to paste a CMD or Powershell equivalent I’ll be happy to host it.
July 13th, 2007 04:19
Code doesn’t seem to work; are all of the quotes and apostrophe marks correct on the above quote?
July 13th, 2007 04:42
Myspace is web 2.0? I disagree.
July 13th, 2007 04:52
@mavi,
memcached was given to the community as open source. and most of these sites use it. it was developed by danga, aka “livejournal.”
i know it is just one instance, but they do help a little when they can.
July 13th, 2007 05:11
[…] If VentureCake’s survey is any indication, it seems that many “Web 2.0″ companies … Using a simple Unix script which in turn makes use of the nmap port-scanning utility, they scanned 17 popular sites deemed “Web 2.0″ to see what server and operating systems they ran on. With one notable exception — MySpace — they all ran on an open-source server and operating system. […]
July 13th, 2007 05:18
These commands or this “script” of yours doesn’t seem to work. Quotations marks are encoded wrong - you’re supposed to use <code> instead of <blockquote> tag for this sort of things.
Ed:Thanks Rafal - I’ve fixed accordingly.
July 13th, 2007 05:29
[…] VentureCake » Blog Archive » Web 2.0 is built on Open Source […]
July 13th, 2007 05:31
Twitter is a tricked-out Joyent Accelerator, running Sun’s Solaris.
July 13th, 2007 05:34
With Twitter being hosted by Joyent/TextDrive, I would venture a guess that it runs on OpenSolaris and not Linux. I could be wrong but I thought I read on the TextDrive forums that it was running on an Accelerator (or a few of them maybe….).
July 13th, 2007 05:41
[…] If VentureCake’s survey is any indication, it seems that many “Web 2.0″ companies … Using a simple Unix script which in turn makes use of the nmap port-scanning utility, they scanned 17 popular sites deemed “Web 2.0″ to see what server and operating systems they ran on. With one notable exception — MySpace — they all ran on an open-source server and operating system. […]
July 13th, 2007 05:51
Article’s inaccurate (or at best misleading)
Quoting The EBay Architecture presentation from SDForum:
http://www.addsimplicity.com/downloads/eBaySDForum2006-11-29.pdf
“calculus.ebay.com: FreeBSD / Apache Perl GDBM”
“python.ebay.com: Solaris/Oracle”
“bull.ebay.com: Solaris/Oracle”
“bear.ebay.com: Solaris/Oracle”
“Sun A3500″
“2002 - present Re-wrote the entire application in J2EE”
Yeah, they use windows for a little stuff - but the article’s badly misleading.
July 13th, 2007 06:59
[…] Mike MacCana en testant les sites emblématiques du “Web 2.0″. Son test consiste à vérifier le système d’exploitation et le serveur sur lesquels sont installés ces sites. Et là bonne nouvelle, presque chaque site testé tourne […]
July 13th, 2007 08:07
I would like to know what google or yahoo are on. yahoo at some point was the reason many tried free BSD or some version of it, but I wonder if they have moved to Linux or not. Other interesting thing would be if and how they have change the kernel to optimize TCP/IP functions.
Also adding to the Linux based web 2.0 sites:
http://www.crazymenu.com
July 13th, 2007 09:29
Wikipedia runs on Linux servers with a caching server, like this article says. You can just look it up on Wikipedia ;). So only one out of seventeen Web 2.0 sites run Windows.
July 13th, 2007 11:37
Nice article. Though I disapprove of and I am also frightened by the inclusion of myspace in a list of Web 2.0 sites. Myspace doesn’t deserve to share a spot with all these other great sites.
July 13th, 2007 12:22
Wikipedia is run on a couple different types of Linux and uses Apache behind those caches.
More details here.
July 13th, 2007 12:39
Wikimedia runs Linux. They use a variety of distros, and I’m not sure exactly which, but https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/OS_differences says Fedora, SuSE and Debian. That’s likely out of date, though.
July 13th, 2007 19:11
[…] de ver un artículo en inglés en el que ha detallan una lista indicando que muchos de los proyectos web 2.0 utilizan en sus servidores principalmente […]
July 13th, 2007 20:48
nice insights there. no surprise for linux fans actually.
July 13th, 2007 22:23
[…] de este artículo de […]
July 14th, 2007 00:49
[…] Amazon uses Linux. eBay uses Windows Solaris. But what OSs and webservers run Web 2.0? We tested 17 of our favorites and found out. The script is included below to check for yourself here. […]
July 14th, 2007 04:17
[…] hat untersucht, auf welchen Plattformen das Web 2.0 gehosted wird - mit einem für mich nicht überraschendem […]
July 14th, 2007 12:13
Stan, the article has been edited since I posted my original comment. Digg’s web server was previously marked as unknown.
July 14th, 2007 13:49
[…] webservers are web 2.0 sites running? […]
July 14th, 2007 23:37
Web 2.0 is built on Open Source…
[…]Amazon uses Linux. eBay uses Windows. But what OSs and webservers run Web 2.0? We tested 17 of our favorites and found out. The script is included below to check for yourself.[…]…
July 17th, 2007 15:36
[…] blog Venture Cake sono stati pubblicati i risultati dell’indagine condotta dall’autore […]
July 18th, 2007 00:35
“Web 2.0″=marketing BS, but…Just because I can upload video for others to see, doesn’t mean I’m on a Web2.0 site. P0rn sites have been doing this for years.
The real push towards “Web 2.0″ is in the replacement of complex desktop applications. Some of these interfaces are super-slick! Most of these are proprietary so far, but that will change as more stable and functional components/widgets are available.
Check out zimbra.com for a good example of what Web2.0 technology is really about.
July 20th, 2007 07:11
[…] http://www.venturecake.com/web-20-is-built-on-open-source/ […]
July 22nd, 2007 02:53
[…] Read more and get the script if you want to verify this on your own.
July 24th, 2007 16:26
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title o.us poetry. Thanks for informative article
July 25th, 2007 04:10
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title Web 2.0 is built on Open Source. Thanks for informative article
August 10th, 2007 01:08
[…] A Three Pronged Attack to Increase Linux Performance Time-Savers: Code Beautifier And Formatter Web 2.0 is built on Open Source Windows Grep - Advanced searching for Windows Life Hacker: Build Advanced Gmail Filters and […]
August 10th, 2007 01:21
Apache server is the number one, surprise does not have..
September 6th, 2007 06:20
[…] VentureCake » Blog Archive » Web 2.0 is built on Open Source Amazon uses Linux. eBay uses Windows Solaris. But what OSs and webservers run Web 2.0? We tested 17 of our favorites and found out. The script is included below to check for yourself. (tags: www.venturecake.com 2007 mes8 dia5 at_tecp web2.0 servidores open_source mercado hosting hosts) […]
September 12th, 2007 01:33
Many web 2.0 companies are moving to Solaris, in fact, Tim O’Reilly recently dubbed Sun’s x4500 server “the web 2.0 server” check the article out here. And Sun has a great program for startups to get discounts on systems, free opensource software, etc. They even have their own answer to LAMP, SAMP.
November 14th, 2007 14:18
The great thing is that everyone in the World will benefit from web 2.0 development and will be able to use them . This is the power of Open Source and will be much helpful for Web 2.0 startups.
December 21st, 2007 10:44
Interested article. Thanks.