content/ABOUT_APACHE.md - httpd-site - Git at Google

 Title: About the Apache HTTP Server Project
 license: https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

 # What is the Apache HTTP Server Project?  {#What}

 The Apache HTTP Server Project is a collaborative software development
 effort aimed at creating a robust, commercial-grade, featureful, and
 freely-available source code implementation of an HTTP (Web) server. The
 project is jointly managed by a group of volunteers located around the
 world, using the Internet and the Web to communicate, plan, and develop the
 server and its related documentation. This project is part of the Apache
 Software Foundation. In addition, hundreds of users have contributed ideas,
 code, and documentation to the project. This file is intended to briefly
 describe the history of the Apache HTTP Server and recognize the many
 contributors.

 # How Apache Came to Be  {#How}

 In February of 1995, the most popular server software on the Web was the
 public domain HTTP daemon developed by Rob McCool at the National Center
 for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
 However, development of that httpd had stalled after Rob left NCSA in
 mid-1994, and many webmasters had developed their own extensions and bug
 fixes that were in need of a common distribution. A small group of these
 webmasters, contacted via private e-mail, gathered together for the purpose
 of coordinating their changes (in the form of "patches"). Brian Behlendorf
 and Cliff Skolnick put together a mailing list, shared information space,
 and logins for the core developers on a machine in the California Bay Area,
 with bandwidth donated by HotWired. By the end of February, eight core
 contributors formed the foundation of the original Apache Group:

 - Brian Behlendorf
 - Roy T. Fielding
 - Rob Hartill
 - David Robinson
 - Cliff Skolnick
 - Randy Terbush
 - Robert S. Thau
 - Andrew Wilson

 with additional contributions from

 - Eric Hagberg
 - Frank Peters
 - Nicolas Pioch

 Using NCSA httpd 1.3 as a base, we added all of the published bug fixes and
 worthwhile enhancements we could find, tested the result on our own
 servers, and made the first official public release (0.6.2) of the Apache
 server in April 1995. By coincidence, NCSA restarted their own development
 during the same period, and Brandon Long and Beth Frank of the NCSA Server
 Development Team joined the list in March as honorary members so that the
 two projects could share ideas and fixes.

 The early Apache server was a big hit, but we all knew that the codebase
 needed a general overhaul and redesign. During May-June 1995, while Rob
 Hartill and the rest of the group focused on implementing new features for
 0.7.x (like pre-forked child processes) and supporting the rapidly growing
 Apache user community, Robert Thau designed a new server architecture
 (code-named Shambhala) which included a modular structure and API for
 better extensibility, pool-based memory allocation, and an adaptive
 pre-forking process model. The group switched to this new server base in
 July and added the features from 0.7.x, resulting in Apache 0.8.8 (and its
 brethren) in August.

 After extensive beta testing, many ports to obscure platforms, a new set of
 documentation (by David Robinson), and the addition of many features in the
 form of our standard modules, Apache 1.0 was released on December 1, 1995.

 Less than a year after the group was formed, the Apache server passed
 NCSA's httpd as the #1 server on the Internet and according to the [survey
 by Netcraft](http://www.netcraft.com/survey/) , it retains that position
 today.

 In 1999, members of the Apache Group formed the [Apache Software
 Foundation](http://www.apache.org/) to provide organizational, legal, and
 financial support for the Apache HTTP Server. The foundation has placed the
 software on a solid footing for future development, and greatly expanded
 the number of Open Source software projects, which fall under this
 Foundation's umbrella.

 # Getting Involved  {#Involved}

 If you just want to send in an occasional suggestion/fix, then you can
 simply use the bug reporting form at &lt;
 http://httpd.apache.org/bug_report.html &gt;. You can also subscribe to
 the announcements mailing list (`announce@httpd.apache.org`)
 which we use to broadcast information about new releases, bugfixes, and
 upcoming events. There's a lot of information about the development process
 (much of it in serious need of updating) to be found at &lt;
 http://httpd.apache.org/dev/ &gt;.

 > **NOTE:** The developer mailing list is NOT a user support forum; it is
 > for people actively working on development of the server code. There is
 > also a 'docs' subproject for those who are actively developing and
 > translating the documentation. If you have user/configuration questions,
 > subscribe to the [Users list](../userslist.html) or try the USENET
 > newsgroups " <news:comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix> " or "
 > <news:comp.infosystems.www.servers.ms-windows> " (as appropriate for
 > the platform you use).

 # Development  {#Development}

 There is a core group of contributors, formed initially of the project
 founders, and augmented from time to time by other outstanding
 contributors. There are 'committers', who are granted access to the source
 code control repositories to help maintain the project or docs, and the
 core group now managing the project, which is called the Apache HTTP
 Project Management Committee (PMC, for short). In fact, each Apache
 Software Foundation project has its own PMC, to determine committers,
 project direction and overall management. The terms "The Apache Group" or
 "Apache Core" are no longer used.

 The project is a meritocracy -- the more work you have done, the more you
 will be allowed to do. The group founders set the original rules, but they
 can be changed by vote of the active PMC members. There is a group of
 people who have logins on our server and access to the source code
 repositories. Everyone has read-only access to the repositories. Changes to
 the code are proposed on the mailing list and usually voted on by active
 members -- three +1 ('yes' votes) and no -1 ('no' votes, or vetoes) are
 needed to commit a code change during a release cycle; docs are usually
 committed first and then changed as needed, with conflicts resolved by
 majority vote.

 Our primary method of communication is our mailing list. Approximately 40
 messages a day flow over the list, and are typically very conversational in
 tone. We discuss new features to add, bug fixes, user problems,
 developments in the web server community, release dates, etc. The actual
 code development takes place on the developers' local machines, with
 proposed changes communicated using a patch (output of a unified "diff -u
 oldfile newfile" command), and then applied to the source code control
 repositories by one of the committers. Anyone on the mailing list can vote
 on a particular issue, but only those made by active members or people who
 are known to be experts on that part of the server are counted towards the
 requirements for committing. Vetoes must be accompanied by a convincing
 technical justification.

 New members of the Apache HTTP Project Management Committee are added when
 a frequent contributor is nominated by one member and unanimously approved
 by the voting members. In most cases, this "new" member has been actively
 contributing to the group's work for over six months, so it's usually an
 easy decision.

 The project guidelines continuously evolve under the oversight of the PMC,
 as the membership of the group changes and our development/coordination
 tools improve.

 # Why Apache Software is Free  {#why-free}

 Apache Software exists to provide robust and commercial-grade reference
 implementations of many types of software. It must remain a platform upon
 which individuals and institutions can build reliable systems, both for
 experimental purposes and for mission-critical purposes. We believe that
 the tools of online publishing should be in the hands of everyone, and that
 software companies should make their money by providing value-added
 services such as specialized modules and support, amongst other things. We
 realize that it is often seen as an economic advantage for one company to
 "own" a market - in the software industry, that means to control tightly a
 particular conduit such that all others must pay for its use. This is
 typically done by "owning" the protocols through which companies conduct
 business, at the expense of all those other companies. To the extent that
 the protocols of the World Wide Web remain "unowned" by a single company,
 the Web will remain a level playing field for companies large and small.
 Thus, "ownership" of the protocols must be prevented. To this end, the
 existence of robust reference implementations of various protocols and
 application programming interfaces, available free to all companies and
 individuals, is a tremendously good thing.

 Furthermore, the Apache Software Foundation is an organic entity; those who
 benefit from this software by using it, often contribute back to it by
 providing feature enhancements, bug fixes, and support for others in public
 lists and newsgroups. The effort expended by any particular individual is
 usually fairly light, but the resulting product is made very strong. These
 kinds of communities can only happen with freely available software -- when
 someone has paid for software, they usually aren't willing to fix its bugs
 for free. One can argue, then, that Apache's strength comes from the fact
 that it's free, and if it were made "not free" it would suffer
 tremendously, even if that money were spent on a real development team.

 We want to see Apache Software used very widely -- by large companies,
 small companies, research institutions, schools, individuals, in the
 intranet environment, everywhere -- even though this may mean that
 companies who could afford commercial software, and would pay for it
 without blinking, might get a "free ride" by using Apache. We are even
 happy when some commercial software companies completely drop their own
 HTTP server development plans and use Apache as a base, with the proper
 attributions as described in the
 [LICENSE](http://www.apache.org/licenses/). That is to say, the Apache HTTP
 Sever only comes from the Apache Software Foundation, but many vendors ship
 their own product "based on the Apache  {Project}". There is no "{Vendor}
 Apache  {Product}", this is an abuse of the Apache Software Foundation's
 marks.
	Title: About the Apache HTTP Server Project
	license: https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

	# What is the Apache HTTP Server Project? {#What}

	The Apache HTTP Server Project is a collaborative software development
	effort aimed at creating a robust, commercial-grade, featureful, and
	freely-available source code implementation of an HTTP (Web) server. The
	project is jointly managed by a group of volunteers located around the
	world, using the Internet and the Web to communicate, plan, and develop the
	server and its related documentation. This project is part of the Apache
	Software Foundation. In addition, hundreds of users have contributed ideas,
	code, and documentation to the project. This file is intended to briefly
	describe the history of the Apache HTTP Server and recognize the many
	contributors.

	# How Apache Came to Be {#How}

	In February of 1995, the most popular server software on the Web was the
	public domain HTTP daemon developed by Rob McCool at the National Center
	for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
	However, development of that httpd had stalled after Rob left NCSA in
	mid-1994, and many webmasters had developed their own extensions and bug
	fixes that were in need of a common distribution. A small group of these
	webmasters, contacted via private e-mail, gathered together for the purpose
	of coordinating their changes (in the form of "patches"). Brian Behlendorf
	and Cliff Skolnick put together a mailing list, shared information space,
	and logins for the core developers on a machine in the California Bay Area,
	with bandwidth donated by HotWired. By the end of February, eight core
	contributors formed the foundation of the original Apache Group:

	- Brian Behlendorf
	- Roy T. Fielding
	- Rob Hartill
	- David Robinson
	- Cliff Skolnick
	- Randy Terbush
	- Robert S. Thau
	- Andrew Wilson

	with additional contributions from

	- Eric Hagberg
	- Frank Peters
	- Nicolas Pioch

	Using NCSA httpd 1.3 as a base, we added all of the published bug fixes and
	worthwhile enhancements we could find, tested the result on our own
	servers, and made the first official public release (0.6.2) of the Apache
	server in April 1995. By coincidence, NCSA restarted their own development
	during the same period, and Brandon Long and Beth Frank of the NCSA Server
	Development Team joined the list in March as honorary members so that the
	two projects could share ideas and fixes.

	The early Apache server was a big hit, but we all knew that the codebase
	needed a general overhaul and redesign. During May-June 1995, while Rob
	Hartill and the rest of the group focused on implementing new features for
	0.7.x (like pre-forked child processes) and supporting the rapidly growing
	Apache user community, Robert Thau designed a new server architecture
	(code-named Shambhala) which included a modular structure and API for
	better extensibility, pool-based memory allocation, and an adaptive
	pre-forking process model. The group switched to this new server base in
	July and added the features from 0.7.x, resulting in Apache 0.8.8 (and its
	brethren) in August.

	After extensive beta testing, many ports to obscure platforms, a new set of
	documentation (by David Robinson), and the addition of many features in the
	form of our standard modules, Apache 1.0 was released on December 1, 1995.

	Less than a year after the group was formed, the Apache server passed
	NCSA's httpd as the #1 server on the Internet and according to the [survey
	by Netcraft](http://www.netcraft.com/survey/) , it retains that position
	today.

	In 1999, members of the Apache Group formed the [Apache Software
	Foundation](http://www.apache.org/) to provide organizational, legal, and
	financial support for the Apache HTTP Server. The foundation has placed the
	software on a solid footing for future development, and greatly expanded
	the number of Open Source software projects, which fall under this
	Foundation's umbrella.

	# Getting Involved {#Involved}

	If you just want to send in an occasional suggestion/fix, then you can
	simply use the bug reporting form at <
	http://httpd.apache.org/bug_report.html >. You can also subscribe to
	the announcements mailing list (`announce@httpd.apache.org`)
	which we use to broadcast information about new releases, bugfixes, and
	upcoming events. There's a lot of information about the development process
	(much of it in serious need of updating) to be found at <
	http://httpd.apache.org/dev/ >.

	> NOTE: The developer mailing list is NOT a user support forum; it is
	> for people actively working on development of the server code. There is
	> also a 'docs' subproject for those who are actively developing and
	> translating the documentation. If you have user/configuration questions,
	> subscribe to the [Users list](../userslist.html) or try the USENET
	> newsgroups " <news:comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix> " or "
	> <news:comp.infosystems.www.servers.ms-windows> " (as appropriate for
	> the platform you use).

	# Development {#Development}

	There is a core group of contributors, formed initially of the project
	founders, and augmented from time to time by other outstanding
	contributors. There are 'committers', who are granted access to the source
	code control repositories to help maintain the project or docs, and the
	core group now managing the project, which is called the Apache HTTP
	Project Management Committee (PMC, for short). In fact, each Apache
	Software Foundation project has its own PMC, to determine committers,
	project direction and overall management. The terms "The Apache Group" or
	"Apache Core" are no longer used.

	The project is a meritocracy -- the more work you have done, the more you
	will be allowed to do. The group founders set the original rules, but they
	can be changed by vote of the active PMC members. There is a group of
	people who have logins on our server and access to the source code
	repositories. Everyone has read-only access to the repositories. Changes to
	the code are proposed on the mailing list and usually voted on by active
	members -- three +1 ('yes' votes) and no -1 ('no' votes, or vetoes) are
	needed to commit a code change during a release cycle; docs are usually
	committed first and then changed as needed, with conflicts resolved by
	majority vote.

	Our primary method of communication is our mailing list. Approximately 40
	messages a day flow over the list, and are typically very conversational in
	tone. We discuss new features to add, bug fixes, user problems,
	developments in the web server community, release dates, etc. The actual
	code development takes place on the developers' local machines, with
	proposed changes communicated using a patch (output of a unified "diff -u
	oldfile newfile" command), and then applied to the source code control
	repositories by one of the committers. Anyone on the mailing list can vote
	on a particular issue, but only those made by active members or people who
	are known to be experts on that part of the server are counted towards the
	requirements for committing. Vetoes must be accompanied by a convincing
	technical justification.

	New members of the Apache HTTP Project Management Committee are added when
	a frequent contributor is nominated by one member and unanimously approved
	by the voting members. In most cases, this "new" member has been actively
	contributing to the group's work for over six months, so it's usually an
	easy decision.

	The project guidelines continuously evolve under the oversight of the PMC,
	as the membership of the group changes and our development/coordination
	tools improve.

	# Why Apache Software is Free {#why-free}

	Apache Software exists to provide robust and commercial-grade reference
	implementations of many types of software. It must remain a platform upon
	which individuals and institutions can build reliable systems, both for
	experimental purposes and for mission-critical purposes. We believe that
	the tools of online publishing should be in the hands of everyone, and that
	software companies should make their money by providing value-added
	services such as specialized modules and support, amongst other things. We
	realize that it is often seen as an economic advantage for one company to
	"own" a market - in the software industry, that means to control tightly a
	particular conduit such that all others must pay for its use. This is
	typically done by "owning" the protocols through which companies conduct
	business, at the expense of all those other companies. To the extent that
	the protocols of the World Wide Web remain "unowned" by a single company,
	the Web will remain a level playing field for companies large and small.
	Thus, "ownership" of the protocols must be prevented. To this end, the
	existence of robust reference implementations of various protocols and
	application programming interfaces, available free to all companies and
	individuals, is a tremendously good thing.

	Furthermore, the Apache Software Foundation is an organic entity; those who
	benefit from this software by using it, often contribute back to it by
	providing feature enhancements, bug fixes, and support for others in public
	lists and newsgroups. The effort expended by any particular individual is
	usually fairly light, but the resulting product is made very strong. These
	kinds of communities can only happen with freely available software -- when
	someone has paid for software, they usually aren't willing to fix its bugs
	for free. One can argue, then, that Apache's strength comes from the fact
	that it's free, and if it were made "not free" it would suffer
	tremendously, even if that money were spent on a real development team.

	We want to see Apache Software used very widely -- by large companies,
	small companies, research institutions, schools, individuals, in the
	intranet environment, everywhere -- even though this may mean that
	companies who could afford commercial software, and would pay for it
	without blinking, might get a "free ride" by using Apache. We are even
	happy when some commercial software companies completely drop their own
	HTTP server development plans and use Apache as a base, with the proper
	attributions as described in the
	[LICENSE](http://www.apache.org/licenses/). That is to say, the Apache HTTP
	Sever only comes from the Apache Software Foundation, but many vendors ship
	their own product "based on the Apache {Project}". There is no "{Vendor}
	Apache {Product}", this is an abuse of the Apache Software Foundation's
	marks.