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The Apache HTTP Server Project
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http://httpd.apache.org/
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The Apache Project is a collaborative software development effort aimed
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at creating a robust, commercial-grade, featureful, and freely-available
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source code implementation of an HTTP (Web) server. The project is
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jointly managed by a group of volunteers located around the world, using
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the Internet and the Web to communicate, plan, and develop the server and
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its related documentation. These volunteers are known as the Apache Group.
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In addition, hundreds of users have contributed ideas, code, and
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documentation to the project. This file is intended to briefly describe
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the history of the Apache Group, recognize the many contributors, and
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explain how you can join the fun too.
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In February of 1995, the most popular server software on the Web was the
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public domain HTTP daemon developed by Rob McCool at the National Center
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for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
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However, development of that httpd had stalled after Rob left NCSA in
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mid-1994, and many webmasters had developed their own extensions and bug
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fixes that were in need of a common distribution. A small group of these
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webmasters, contacted via private e-mail, gathered together for the purpose
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of coordinating their changes (in the form of "patches"). Brian Behlendorf
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and Cliff Skolnick put together a mailing list, shared information space,
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and logins for the core developers on a machine in the California Bay Area,
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with bandwidth and diskspace donated by HotWired and Organic Online.
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By the end of February, eight core contributors formed the foundation
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of the original Apache Group:
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Brian Behlendorf Roy T. Fielding Rob Hartill
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David Robinson Cliff Skolnick Randy Terbush
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Robert S. Thau Andrew Wilson
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with additional contributions from
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Eric Hagberg Frank Peters Nicolas Pioch
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Using NCSA httpd 1.3 as a base, we added all of the published bug fixes
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and worthwhile enhancements we could find, tested the result on our own
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servers, and made the first official public release (0.6.2) of the Apache
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server in April 1995. By coincidence, NCSA restarted their own development
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during the same period, and Brandon Long and Beth Frank of the NCSA Server
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Development Team joined the list in March as honorary members so that the
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two projects could share ideas and fixes.
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The early Apache server was a big hit, but we all knew that the codebase
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needed a general overhaul and redesign. During May-June 1995, while
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Rob Hartill and the rest of the group focused on implementing new features
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for 0.7.x (like pre-forked child processes) and supporting the rapidly growing
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Apache user community, Robert Thau designed a new server architecture
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(code-named Shambhala) which included a modular structure and API for better
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extensibility, pool-based memory allocation, and an adaptive pre-forking
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process model. The group switched to this new server base in July and added
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the features from 0.7.x, resulting in Apache 0.8.8 (and its brethren)
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After extensive beta testing, many ports to obscure platforms, a new set
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of documentation (by David Robinson), and the addition of many features
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in the form of our standard modules, Apache 1.0 was released on
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Less than a year after the group was formed, the Apache server passed
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NCSA's httpd as the #1 server on the Internet.
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The survey by Netcraft (http://www.netcraft.com/survey/) shows that Apache
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is today more widely used than all other web servers combined.
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============================================================================
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Current Apache Group in alphabetical order as of 2 April 2002:
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Greg Ames IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA
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Aaron Bannert California
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Brian Behlendorf Collab.Net, California
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Ken Coar IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA
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Mark J. Cox Red Hat, UK
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Lars Eilebrecht Freelance Consultant, Munich, Germany
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Ralf S. Engelschall Cable & Wireless Deutschland, Munich, Germany
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Justin Erenkrantz University of California, Irvine
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Roy T. Fielding Day Software, California
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Tony Finch Covalent Technologies, California
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Dean Gaudet Transmeta Corporation, California
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Dirk-Willem van Gulik Covalent Technologies, California
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Brian Havard Australia
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Ian Holsman CNET, California
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Ben Hyde Gensym, Massachusetts
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Jim Jagielski jaguNET Access Services, Maryland
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Manoj Kasichainula Collab.Net, California
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Alexei Kosut Stanford University, California
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Martin Kraemer Munich, Germany
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Ben Laurie Freelance Consultant, UK
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Rasmus Lerdorf Yahoo!, California
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Daniel Lopez Ridruejo Covalent Technologies, California
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Doug MacEachern Covalent Technologies, California
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Aram W. Mirzadeh CableVision, New York
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Chuck Murcko The Topsail Group, Pennsylvania
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Brian Pane CNET Networks, California
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Sameer Parekh California
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William A. Rowe, Jr. Covalent, Illinois
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Wilfredo Sanchez Apple Computer, California
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Cliff Skolnick California
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Greg Stein California
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Bill Stoddard IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC
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Sander Striker The Netherlands
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Randy Terbush Covalent Technologies, California
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Jeff Trawick IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC
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Cliff Woolley University of Virginia
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Apache Emeritus (old group members now off doing other things)
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Ryan Bloom California
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Rob Hartill Internet Movie DB, UK
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David Robinson Cambridge University, UK
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Robert S. Thau MIT, Massachusetts
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Andrew Wilson Freelance Consultant, UK
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Other major contributors
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Howard Fear (mod_include), Florent Guillaume (language negotiation),
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Koen Holtman (rewrite of mod_negotiation),
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Kevin Hughes (creator of all those nifty icons),
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Brandon Long and Beth Frank (NCSA Server Development Team, post-1.3),
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Ambarish Malpani (Beginning of the NT port),
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Rob McCool (original author of the NCSA httpd 1.3),
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Paul Richards (convinced the group to use remote CVS after 1.0),
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Garey Smiley (OS/2 port), Henry Spencer (author of the regex library).
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Many 3rd-party modules, frequently used and recommended, are also
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freely-available and linked from the related projects page:
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<http://modules.apache.org/>, and their authors frequently
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contribute ideas, patches, and testing.
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Hundreds of people have made individual contributions to the Apache
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project. Patch contributors are listed in the CHANGES file.
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Frequent contributors have included Petr Lampa, Tom Tromey, James H.
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Cloos Jr., Ed Korthof, Nathan Neulinger, Jason S. Clary, Jason A. Dour,
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Michael Douglass, Tony Sanders, Brian Tao, Michael Smith, Adam Sussman,
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Nathan Schrenk, Matthew Gray, and John Heidemann.
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============================================================================
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How to become involved in the Apache project
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There are several levels of contributing. If you just want to send
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in an occasional suggestion/fix, then you can just use the bug reporting
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form at <http://httpd.apache.org/bug_report.html>. You can also subscribe
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to the announcements mailing list (announce-subscribe@httpd.apache.org) which
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we use to broadcast information about new releases, bugfixes, and upcoming
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events. There's a lot of information about the development process (much of
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it in serious need of updating) to be found at <http://httpd.apache.org/dev/>.
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If you'd like to become an active contributor to the Apache project (the
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group of volunteers who vote on changes to the distributed server), then
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you need to start by subscribing to the dev@httpd.apache.org mailing list.
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One warning though: traffic is high, 1000 to 1500 messages/month.
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To subscribe to the list, send an email to dev-subscribe@httpd.apache.org.
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We recommend reading the list for a while before trying to jump in to
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NOTE: The developer mailing list (dev@httpd.apache.org) is not
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a user support forum; it is for people actively working on development
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of the server code and documentation, and for planning future
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directions. If you have user/configuration questions, send them
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to users list <http://httpd.apache.org/userslist> or to the USENET
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newsgroup "comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix".or for windows users,
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the newsgroup "comp.infosystems.www.servers.ms-windows".
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There is a core group of contributors (informally called the "core")
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which was formed from the project founders and is augmented from time
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to time when core members nominate outstanding contributors and the
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rest of the core members agree. The core group focus is more on
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"business" issues and limited-circulation things like security problems
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than on mainstream code development. The term "The Apache Group"
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technically refers to this core of project contributors.
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The Apache project is a meritocracy -- the more work you have done, the more
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you are allowed to do. The group founders set the original rules, but
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they can be changed by vote of the active members. There is a group
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of people who have logins on our server (apache.org) and access to the
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CVS repository. Everyone has access to the CVS snapshots. Changes to
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the code are proposed on the mailing list and usually voted on by active
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members -- three +1 (yes votes) and no -1 (no votes, or vetoes) are needed
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to commit a code change during a release cycle; docs are usually committed
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first and then changed as needed, with conflicts resolved by majority vote.
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Our primary method of communication is our mailing list. Approximately 40
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messages a day flow over the list, and are typically very conversational in
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tone. We discuss new features to add, bug fixes, user problems, developments
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in the web server community, release dates, etc. The actual code development
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takes place on the developers' local machines, with proposed changes
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communicated using a patch (output of a unified "diff -u oldfile newfile"
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command), and committed to the source repository by one of the core
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developers using remote CVS. Anyone on the mailing list can vote on a
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particular issue, but we only count those made by active members or people
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who are known to be experts on that part of the server. Vetoes must be
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accompanied by a convincing explanation.
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New members of the Apache Group are added when a frequent contributor is
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nominated by one member and unanimously approved by the voting members.
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In most cases, this "new" member has been actively contributing to the
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group's work for over six months, so it's usually an easy decision.
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The above describes our past and current (as of July 2000) guidelines,
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which will probably change over time as the membership of the group
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changes and our development/coordination tools improve.
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============================================================================
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The Apache Software Foundation (www.apache.org)
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The Apache Software Foundation exists to provide organizational, legal,
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and financial support for the Apache open-source software projects.
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Founded in June 1999 by the Apache Group, the Foundation has been
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incorporated as a membership-based, not-for-profit corporation in order
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to ensure that the Apache projects continue to exist beyond the participation
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of individual volunteers, to enable contributions of intellectual property
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and funds on a sound basis, and to provide a vehicle for limiting legal
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exposure while participating in open-source software projects.
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You are invited to participate in The Apache Software Foundation. We welcome
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contributions in many forms. Our membership consists of those individuals
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who have demonstrated a commitment to collaborative open-source software
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development through sustained participation and contributions within the
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Foundation's projects. Many people and companies have contributed towards
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the success of the Apache projects.
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============================================================================
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Apache exists to provide a robust and commercial-grade reference
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implementation of the HTTP protocol. It must remain a platform upon which
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individuals and institutions can build reliable systems, both for
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experimental purposes and for mission-critical purposes. We believe the
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tools of online publishing should be in the hands of everyone, and
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software companies should make their money providing value-added services
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such as specialized modules and support, amongst other things. We realize
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that it is often seen as an economic advantage for one company to "own" a
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market - in the software industry that means to control tightly a
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particular conduit such that all others must pay. This is typically done
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by "owning" the protocols through which companies conduct business, at the
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expense of all those other companies. To the extent that the protocols of
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the World Wide Web remain "unowned" by a single company, the Web will
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remain a level playing field for companies large and small. Thus,
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"ownership" of the protocol must be prevented, and the existence of a
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robust reference implementation of the protocol, available absolutely for
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free to all companies, is a tremendously good thing.
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Furthermore, Apache is an organic entity; those who benefit from it
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by using it often contribute back to it by providing feature enhancements,
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bug fixes, and support for others in public newsgroups. The amount of
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effort expended by any particular individual is usually fairly light, but
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the resulting product is made very strong. This kind of community can
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only happen with freeware -- when someone pays for software, they usually
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aren't willing to fix its bugs. One can argue, then, that Apache's
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strength comes from the fact that it's free, and if it were made "not
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free" it would suffer tremendously, even if that money were spent on a
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real development team.
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We want to see Apache used very widely -- by large companies, small
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companies, research institutions, schools, individuals, in the intranet
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environment, everywhere -- even though this may mean that companies who
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could afford commercial software, and would pay for it without blinking,
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might get a "free ride" by using Apache. We would even be happy if some
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commercial software companies completely dropped their own HTTP server
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development plans and used Apache as a base, with the proper attributions
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as described in the LICENSE file.
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Thanks for using Apache!
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