Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 12:40:01 -0400
From: Lamar Owen <lamar.owen@wgcr.org>
Subject: AOLserver 3.0 open source
To: letters@lwn.net

While I'm sure you have received e-mails about this news, here goes:

Friday, July 9 is a date that many people running high-performance,
database-backed web sites have been dreaming of.  America OnLine (AOL)
released their flagship web server, AOLserver, version 3.0 under not
one, but two open source licenses.  AOL ammended the Mozilla Public
License (MPL) and called the result the AOLserver Public License (APL). 
One of the clauses states that derived works can be released either
under the APL or under the GPL -- programmer's discretion.

AOLserver has a long and convoluted history, starting out as -- get this
-- the first commercial web server -- NaviServer, released by a small
company called Navisoft back in 1995.  AOL liked the server so much that
they bought the company.  Renamed GNNserver, it was released for no cost
by AOL -- then AOL renamed it to AOLserver a little over two years ago.
AOLserver is the server behind www.aol.com, www.digitalcity.com, and
many other high-traffic sites.

AOLserver is, and was:
1.)	Multithreaded -- it was one of the, if not THE, first of the
multithreaded web servers;
2.)	Database-centric, with persistent, pooled, database connections,
allowing high performance db access;
3.)	Extensible, with both a C and a TCL API -- its TCL API has a large
set of extensions for database connectivity in a multithreaded fashion;
4.)	Powerful, yet lightweight -- a PPro 200 is capable of saturating a
10Mbps Ethernet with dynamic content;
5.)	Easy to use -- you can use the built-in dynamic pages (adp's) to
access a set-up database pool in minutes;
6.)	While previous versions had a web-based admin tool (written in tcl),
version 3.0 introduces a powerful CLI called the "control port."  For
remote administration in a secure manner, the control port interface
excels -- however, it would not be difficult to write a web-based config
tool in tcl -- in fact, the config file itself is written in tcl.  The
control port can execute any tcl commands, shell commands, edit with vi,
and directly query the database with an SQL command line mode.

The C code is some of the cleanest you will ever have the pleasure to
read.

Comprising a small 160,000 or so lines of code, AOLserver is a valuable
addition to the open source stable.

AOLserver 3.0 is currently in beta and is available through
http://www.aolserver.com , or http://aolserver.lcs.mit.edu

Thanks!

Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio