Apache Software Foundation

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The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is a non-profit corporation (classified as 501(c)3 in the United States) to support Apache software projects, including the Apache HTTP Server. The ASF was formed from the Apache Group and incorporated in Delaware, USA, in June, 1999.

The Apache Software Foundation is a decentralized community of developers. The software they produce is distributed under the terms of the Apache License and are therefore free software / open source software. The Apache projects are characterized by a collaborative, consensus based development process and an open and pragmatic software license. Each project is managed by a self-selected team of technical experts who are active contributors to the project. The ASF is a meritocracy, implying that membership to the foundation is granted only to volunteers who have actively contributed to Apache projects.

Among the ASF's objectives are to provide legal protection to volunteers working on Apache projects, and to prevent the Apache brand name from being used by other organizations without permission.

The ASF also holds several ApacheCon conferences each year, highlighting Apache projects, related technology, and allowing Apache developers to gather together.

1 Projects
2 Board of directors
3 History
4 External links

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Projects

Formally recognized Apache projects include:

Apache HTTP Server: Web server
Ant: Java-based build tool
APR: Apache Portable Runtime, a portability library written in C
Beehive: A Java visual object model
Cocoon: XML publishing framework
DB: database solutions
- Apache Derby: A pure Java Relational database management system
Directory: A directory server supporting LDAP and other protocols
Apache Excalibur: Inversion of Control container named Fortress and related components
Apache Forrest: documentation framework based upon Cocoon
Geronimo Application Server: a Java EE server
Apache Gump: integration, dependencies, and versioning management
Incubator: for aspiring ASF projects
Jakarta: server side Java (including its own set of sub-projects)
Apache James: Java email and news server
Lenya: content management system
Logging: logging services for application debugging and auditing, including log4j
Lucene: text search engine library written entirely in Java
Maven: Java project management and comprehension tool
MyFaces: JavaServer Faces implementation
mod perl: dynamic websites using Perl
Apache Portals: web portal related software
SpamAssassin: email filter used to identify spam.
Struts: Java web applications framework
TCL: dynamic websites using Tool Command Language
Tomcat: a web container for serving servlets and JSP
Web services: Web service related systems
XML: XML solutions for the web
XMLBeans: XML-Java binding tool
XML Graphics: conversion of XML formats to graphical output

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Board of directors

The current board of directors includes:

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History

The history of the Apache Software Foundation is linked to the Apache HTTP Server, the work on which started in 1994. A group of eight developers started working on enhancing the NCSA HTTPd daemon. They were Brian Behlendorf, Roy Fielding, Rob Hartill, David Robinson, Cliff Skolnick, Randy Terbush, Robert S. Thau and Andrew Wilson with additional contributions from Eric Hagberg, Frank Peters and Nicolas Pioch.

The enhanced product called the Apache server was released in April 1995. In 1999, members of the Apache Group formed the Foundation to provide support for the Apache HTTP Server. The ASF has a membership of 151 members and approximately 1000 committers as of 2005.

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