Editing Web server (section)

=== Fast and wild development (1991–1995) ===
In December 1991, the {{strong|first web server outside Europe}} was installed at SLAC (U.S.A.).<ref name="web-history" /> This was a very important event because it started trans-continental web communications between web browsers and web servers.

In 1991–1993, CERN web server program continued to be actively developed by the www group, meanwhile, thanks to the availability of its source code and the public specifications of the HTTP protocol, many other implementations of web servers started to be developed.

In April 1993, CERN issued a public official statement stating that the three components of Web software (the basic line-mode client, the web server and the library of common code), along with their [[source code]], were put in the [[public domain]].<ref name="CERN-licensing-the-web">{{Cite web|url=https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web/licensing-web|title=Licensing the Web|author1=Tim Smith|author2=François Flückiger|publisher=CERN (World Wide Web project)|access-date=2021-10-16|archive-date=6 December 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211206161306/http://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web/licensing-web|url-status=live}}</ref> This statement freed web server developers from any possible legal issue about the development of ''derivative work'' based on that source code (a threat that in practice never existed).

At the beginning of 1994, the most notable among new web servers was [[NCSA httpd]] which ran on a variety of [[Unix]]-based OSs and could serve ''dynamically generated content'' by implementing the <code>POST</code> HTTP method and the [[Common Gateway Interface|CGI]] to communicate with external programs. These capabilities, along with the multimedia features of NCSA's [[Mosaic (web browser)|Mosaic]] browser (also able to manage [[HTML]] [[Form (HTML)|FORM]]s in order to send data to a web server) highlighted the potential of web technology for publishing and [[distributed computing]] applications.{{image frame
|content={{Graph:Chart
  |height = 160
  |width = 170
  |xAxisTitle = Year
  |xAxisAngle = -40
  |yAxisTitle = Number of active web sites
  |yAxisMin = 0
  |type = rect
  |showValues = offset:4
  |x = 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996
  |y1 = 1, 10, 50, 623, 10022, 100000
  |colors = blue
  }}
|width=
|align=
|caption=Number of active web sites (1991–1996)<ref name="ws-web-app-test-ajax">{{cite book|url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/27353046 |title=Analysis and Testing of Ajax-based Single-page Web Applications |publisher=|author=Ali Mesbah|language=en|isbn=978-90-79982-02-8|year=2009|access-date=2021-12-18}}</ref><ref name="ws-stats-1991-1996">{{cite web|url=http://www.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html |title=Hobbes' Internet Timeline v5.1 (WWW Growth) NOTE: till 1996 number of web servers = number of web sites |publisher=ISOC|author=Robert H'obbes' Zakon|url-status=unfit|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000815100731/http://www.isoc.org/guest/zakon/Internet/History/HIT.html|archive-date=2000-08-15|access-date=2021-12-18}}</ref>
|pos=
|border=no
|mode=
}}In the second half of 1994, the development of NCSA httpd stalled to the point that a group of external software developers, [[webmaster]]s and other professional figures interested in that server, started to write and collect [[Patch (computing)|patches]] thanks to the NCSA httpd source code being available to the public domain.  At the beginning of 1995 those patches were all applied to the last release of NCSA source code and, after several tests, the [[Apache HTTP server]] project was started.<ref name="NCSA-public-Apache">{{Cite web |url=http://illinois.edu/lb/imageList/2943 |title=NCSA httpd |author= |publisher=NCSA (web archive) |access-date=2021-12-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100801142847/http://illinois.edu/lb/imageList/2943 |archive-date=1 August 2010 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name="ws-apache-how-it-came-to-be">{{Cite web|url=https://httpd.apache.org/ABOUT_APACHE.html|title=About the Apache HTTPd server: How Apache Came to be|publisher=Apache: HTTPd server project|year=1997|access-date=2021-12-17|language=en|archive-date=7 June 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080607122013/http://httpd.apache.org/ABOUT_APACHE.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

At the end of 1994, a new commercial web server, named [[Oracle iPlanet Web Server#Netsite|Netsite]], was released with specific features.  It was the first one of many other similar products that were developed first by [[Netscape]], then also by [[Sun Microsystems]], and finally by [[Oracle Corporation]].

In mid-1995, the first version of [[Internet Information Services|IIS]] was released, for [[Windows NT]] OS, by [[Microsoft]]. This marked the entry, in the field of World Wide Web technologies, of a very important commercial developer and vendor that has played and still is playing a key role on both sides (client and server) of the web.

In the second half of 1995, CERN and NCSA web servers started to decline (in global percentage usage) because of the widespread adoption of new web servers which had a much faster development cycle along with more features, more fixes applied, and more performances than the previous ones.