Is just a little care and foresight too much to ask from Microsoft's PR spinmeisters? Yesterday we reported that Microsoft had given $1 million worth of software and cash each to the Republican and Democrat conventions, and it's just the shortest step from there to checking to see what the conventions' Web sites are running on, isn't it?

So the $900,000 worth of software the Republicans copped clearly didn't include Web servers, as www.gopconvention.com is running Apache on Solaris. Microsoft is the second largest contributor to the Republican convention, and under current circumstances is widely viewed as trying to buy itself a get out of jail free card.

Microsoft sees the GOP as more likely to be supportive, so it would surely have been sensible to ply them with strong servers. Yet the GOP, bless 'em, gives the business to Sun. Sun may of course have donated the gear as a McNealy merry jape - all things are possible.

But, you ask, what about the Dems? They're less likely to favour Microsoft, more likely to agree with Sun and Oracle over the company's fate. But, ahem, dems2000.com is running Microsoft IIS 4.0 on Windows NT. ®

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