The term has been used in many a context but the true meaning of a web server is a framework which makes computers that operate on several platforms to interconnect and understand each other as if they were on the same plain. This has become necessary due to the huge amount of people who operate within communities on different platforms that used to work independently. Now users on any platform use a standard interconnection interpreter of sorts that allows one running on windows that needs processing of data which is on another computer connected to the internet using Linux.