Microsoft Admits to Learning from Open Source

It was great to see that Microsoft actually publicly admitted that it learned something from an Open Source app. From the article: “We've learned from Apache,” acknowledged Bill Staples, product unit manager for IIS. Version 7.0 takes the IIS feature set and breaks it down into individual components, or modules, that can be loaded on an as-needed basis. The result is a Web server with much less overhead.
IIS will also gain .htaccess-like functionality. It has always amazed me some of the things that you just can't do in IIS. That being said, I hope Apache isn't resting on it's laurels, since it could learn a couple things too. The management interface is almost non-existent and a nice API to enable easier scripting of certain tasks (such as adding and deleting vhosts) would be a welcome addition. To me the story here is not what will or will not be in IIS7 though. It's in the fact the Microsoft has reached a point where they will openly admit in a public forum that Open Source produced software that they'd like to learn from. That's a big step and to me speaks volumes This absolutely would not have happened even a year ago.
–jeremy
Open Source, Apache, Microsoft, IIS