In the film "The Matrix," actor Keanu Reeves could alter his reality at will; anything was possible within the Matrix. Interestingly, Microsoft has christened a beta of a new free Web application "WebMatrix." Maybe it thinks that it can bend the will of developrs who would typically look toward the LAMP stack for free tooling to take another look at its products.
WebMatrix was launched yesterday, and is comprised of an "express" version of Microsoft’s IIS Web Server, SQL Server Compact Edition, and a view engine that gives developers a templating based approach to ASP.NET MVC that embeds C# and Visual Basic within HTML. Microsoft also supplies code sample, documentation, and links to the open source CodePlex application gallery.
All in all, it weighs in at 15 MB - assuming.NET 4.0 is preinstalled. It can be downloaded through Microsoft's Web App Installer (Web AI).
Whether WebMatrix is enough to win over developers is another story. Express means "limited," and why would a developer switch to a "free" platform that isn't scalable? Developer productivity could be key here. That's what Microsoft does best, and it's what could differentiate its stack.