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| 1 |
| 2 The Apache HTTP Server Project |
| 3 |
| 4 http://httpd.apache.org/ |
| 5 |
| 6 February 2002 |
| 7 |
| 8 The Apache Project is a collaborative software development effort aimed |
| 9 at creating a robust, commercial-grade, featureful, and freely-available |
| 10 source code implementation of an HTTP (Web) server. The project is |
| 11 jointly managed by a group of volunteers located around the world, using |
| 12 the Internet and the Web to communicate, plan, and develop the server and |
| 13 its related documentation. These volunteers are known as the Apache Group. |
| 14 In addition, hundreds of users have contributed ideas, code, and |
| 15 documentation to the project. This file is intended to briefly describe |
| 16 the history of the Apache Group, recognize the many contributors, and |
| 17 explain how you can join the fun too. |
| 18 |
| 19 In February of 1995, the most popular server software on the Web was the |
| 20 public domain HTTP daemon developed by Rob McCool at the National Center |
| 21 for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. |
| 22 However, development of that httpd had stalled after Rob left NCSA in |
| 23 mid-1994, and many webmasters had developed their own extensions and bug |
| 24 fixes that were in need of a common distribution. A small group of these |
| 25 webmasters, contacted via private e-mail, gathered together for the purpose |
| 26 of coordinating their changes (in the form of "patches"). Brian Behlendorf |
| 27 and Cliff Skolnick put together a mailing list, shared information space, |
| 28 and logins for the core developers on a machine in the California Bay Area, |
| 29 with bandwidth and diskspace donated by HotWired and Organic Online. |
| 30 By the end of February, eight core contributors formed the foundation |
| 31 of the original Apache Group: |
| 32 |
| 33 Brian Behlendorf Roy T. Fielding Rob Hartill |
| 34 David Robinson Cliff Skolnick Randy Terbush |
| 35 Robert S. Thau Andrew Wilson |
| 36 |
| 37 with additional contributions from |
| 38 |
| 39 Eric Hagberg Frank Peters Nicolas Pioch |
| 40 |
| 41 Using NCSA httpd 1.3 as a base, we added all of the published bug fixes |
| 42 and worthwhile enhancements we could find, tested the result on our own |
| 43 servers, and made the first official public release (0.6.2) of the Apache |
| 44 server in April 1995. By coincidence, NCSA restarted their own development |
| 45 during the same period, and Brandon Long and Beth Frank of the NCSA Server |
| 46 Development Team joined the list in March as honorary members so that the |
| 47 two projects could share ideas and fixes. |
| 48 |
| 49 The early Apache server was a big hit, but we all knew that the codebase |
| 50 needed a general overhaul and redesign. During May-June 1995, while |
| 51 Rob Hartill and the rest of the group focused on implementing new features |
| 52 for 0.7.x (like pre-forked child processes) and supporting the rapidly growing |
| 53 Apache user community, Robert Thau designed a new server architecture |
| 54 (code-named Shambhala) which included a modular structure and API for better |
| 55 extensibility, pool-based memory allocation, and an adaptive pre-forking |
| 56 process model. The group switched to this new server base in July and added |
| 57 the features from 0.7.x, resulting in Apache 0.8.8 (and its brethren) |
| 58 in August. |
| 59 |
| 60 After extensive beta testing, many ports to obscure platforms, a new set |
| 61 of documentation (by David Robinson), and the addition of many features |
| 62 in the form of our standard modules, Apache 1.0 was released on |
| 63 December 1, 1995. |
| 64 |
| 65 Less than a year after the group was formed, the Apache server passed |
| 66 NCSA's httpd as the #1 server on the Internet. |
| 67 |
| 68 The survey by Netcraft (http://www.netcraft.com/survey/) shows that Apache |
| 69 is today more widely used than all other web servers combined. |
| 70 |
| 71 ============================================================================ |
| 72 |
| 73 Current Apache Group in alphabetical order as of 2 April 2002: |
| 74 |
| 75 Greg Ames IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA |
| 76 Aaron Bannert California |
| 77 Brian Behlendorf Collab.Net, California |
| 78 Ken Coar IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA |
| 79 Mark J. Cox Red Hat, UK |
| 80 Lars Eilebrecht Freelance Consultant, Munich, Germany |
| 81 Ralf S. Engelschall Cable & Wireless Deutschland, Munich, Germany |
| 82 Justin Erenkrantz University of California, Irvine |
| 83 Roy T. Fielding Day Software, California |
| 84 Tony Finch Covalent Technologies, California |
| 85 Dean Gaudet Transmeta Corporation, California |
| 86 Dirk-Willem van Gulik Covalent Technologies, California |
| 87 Brian Havard Australia |
| 88 Ian Holsman CNET, California |
| 89 Ben Hyde Gensym, Massachusetts |
| 90 Jim Jagielski jaguNET Access Services, Maryland |
| 91 Manoj Kasichainula Collab.Net, California |
| 92 Alexei Kosut Stanford University, California |
| 93 Martin Kraemer Munich, Germany |
| 94 Ben Laurie Freelance Consultant, UK |
| 95 Rasmus Lerdorf Yahoo!, California |
| 96 Daniel Lopez Ridruejo Covalent Technologies, California |
| 97 Doug MacEachern Covalent Technologies, California |
| 98 Aram W. Mirzadeh CableVision, New York |
| 99 Chuck Murcko The Topsail Group, Pennsylvania |
| 100 Brian Pane CNET Networks, California |
| 101 Sameer Parekh California |
| 102 David Reid UK |
| 103 William A. Rowe, Jr. Covalent, Illinois |
| 104 Wilfredo Sanchez Apple Computer, California |
| 105 Cliff Skolnick California |
| 106 Marc Slemko Canada |
| 107 Joshua Slive Canada |
| 108 Greg Stein California |
| 109 Bill Stoddard IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC |
| 110 Sander Striker The Netherlands |
| 111 Paul Sutton Seattle |
| 112 Randy Terbush Covalent Technologies, California |
| 113 Jeff Trawick IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC |
| 114 Cliff Woolley University of Virginia |
| 115 |
| 116 Apache Emeritus (old group members now off doing other things) |
| 117 |
| 118 Ryan Bloom California |
| 119 Rob Hartill Internet Movie DB, UK |
| 120 David Robinson Cambridge University, UK |
| 121 Robert S. Thau MIT, Massachusetts |
| 122 Andrew Wilson Freelance Consultant, UK |
| 123 |
| 124 Other major contributors |
| 125 |
| 126 Howard Fear (mod_include), Florent Guillaume (language negotiation), |
| 127 Koen Holtman (rewrite of mod_negotiation), |
| 128 Kevin Hughes (creator of all those nifty icons), |
| 129 Brandon Long and Beth Frank (NCSA Server Development Team, post-1.3), |
| 130 Ambarish Malpani (Beginning of the NT port), |
| 131 Rob McCool (original author of the NCSA httpd 1.3), |
| 132 Paul Richards (convinced the group to use remote CVS after 1.0), |
| 133 Garey Smiley (OS/2 port), Henry Spencer (author of the regex library). |
| 134 |
| 135 Many 3rd-party modules, frequently used and recommended, are also |
| 136 freely-available and linked from the related projects page: |
| 137 <http://modules.apache.org/>, and their authors frequently |
| 138 contribute ideas, patches, and testing. |
| 139 |
| 140 Hundreds of people have made individual contributions to the Apache |
| 141 project. Patch contributors are listed in the CHANGES file. |
| 142 Frequent contributors have included Petr Lampa, Tom Tromey, James H. |
| 143 Cloos Jr., Ed Korthof, Nathan Neulinger, Jason S. Clary, Jason A. Dour, |
| 144 Michael Douglass, Tony Sanders, Brian Tao, Michael Smith, Adam Sussman, |
| 145 Nathan Schrenk, Matthew Gray, and John Heidemann. |
| 146 |
| 147 ============================================================================ |
| 148 |
| 149 How to become involved in the Apache project |
| 150 |
| 151 There are several levels of contributing. If you just want to send |
| 152 in an occasional suggestion/fix, then you can just use the bug reporting |
| 153 form at <http://httpd.apache.org/bug_report.html>. You can also subscribe |
| 154 to the announcements mailing list (announce-subscribe@httpd.apache.org) which |
| 155 we use to broadcast information about new releases, bugfixes, and upcoming |
| 156 events. There's a lot of information about the development process (much of |
| 157 it in serious need of updating) to be found at <http://httpd.apache.org/dev/>. |
| 158 |
| 159 If you'd like to become an active contributor to the Apache project (the |
| 160 group of volunteers who vote on changes to the distributed server), then |
| 161 you need to start by subscribing to the dev@httpd.apache.org mailing list. |
| 162 One warning though: traffic is high, 1000 to 1500 messages/month. |
| 163 To subscribe to the list, send an email to dev-subscribe@httpd.apache.org. |
| 164 We recommend reading the list for a while before trying to jump in to |
| 165 development. |
| 166 |
| 167 NOTE: The developer mailing list (dev@httpd.apache.org) is not |
| 168 a user support forum; it is for people actively working on development |
| 169 of the server code and documentation, and for planning future |
| 170 directions. If you have user/configuration questions, send them |
| 171 to users list <http://httpd.apache.org/userslist> or to the USENET |
| 172 newsgroup "comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix".or for windows users, |
| 173 the newsgroup "comp.infosystems.www.servers.ms-windows". |
| 174 |
| 175 There is a core group of contributors (informally called the "core") |
| 176 which was formed from the project founders and is augmented from time |
| 177 to time when core members nominate outstanding contributors and the |
| 178 rest of the core members agree. The core group focus is more on |
| 179 "business" issues and limited-circulation things like security problems |
| 180 than on mainstream code development. The term "The Apache Group" |
| 181 technically refers to this core of project contributors. |
| 182 |
| 183 The Apache project is a meritocracy -- the more work you have done, the more |
| 184 you are allowed to do. The group founders set the original rules, but |
| 185 they can be changed by vote of the active members. There is a group |
| 186 of people who have logins on our server (apache.org) and access to the |
| 187 CVS repository. Everyone has access to the CVS snapshots. Changes to |
| 188 the code are proposed on the mailing list and usually voted on by active |
| 189 members -- three +1 (yes votes) and no -1 (no votes, or vetoes) are needed |
| 190 to commit a code change during a release cycle; docs are usually committed |
| 191 first and then changed as needed, with conflicts resolved by majority vote. |
| 192 |
| 193 Our primary method of communication is our mailing list. Approximately 40 |
| 194 messages a day flow over the list, and are typically very conversational in |
| 195 tone. We discuss new features to add, bug fixes, user problems, developments |
| 196 in the web server community, release dates, etc. The actual code development |
| 197 takes place on the developers' local machines, with proposed changes |
| 198 communicated using a patch (output of a unified "diff -u oldfile newfile" |
| 199 command), and committed to the source repository by one of the core |
| 200 developers using remote CVS. Anyone on the mailing list can vote on a |
| 201 particular issue, but we only count those made by active members or people |
| 202 who are known to be experts on that part of the server. Vetoes must be |
| 203 accompanied by a convincing explanation. |
| 204 |
| 205 New members of the Apache Group are added when a frequent contributor is |
| 206 nominated by one member and unanimously approved by the voting members. |
| 207 In most cases, this "new" member has been actively contributing to the |
| 208 group's work for over six months, so it's usually an easy decision. |
| 209 |
| 210 The above describes our past and current (as of July 2000) guidelines, |
| 211 which will probably change over time as the membership of the group |
| 212 changes and our development/coordination tools improve. |
| 213 |
| 214 ============================================================================ |
| 215 |
| 216 The Apache Software Foundation (www.apache.org) |
| 217 |
| 218 The Apache Software Foundation exists to provide organizational, legal, |
| 219 and financial support for the Apache open-source software projects. |
| 220 Founded in June 1999 by the Apache Group, the Foundation has been |
| 221 incorporated as a membership-based, not-for-profit corporation in order |
| 222 to ensure that the Apache projects continue to exist beyond the participation |
| 223 of individual volunteers, to enable contributions of intellectual property |
| 224 and funds on a sound basis, and to provide a vehicle for limiting legal |
| 225 exposure while participating in open-source software projects. |
| 226 |
| 227 You are invited to participate in The Apache Software Foundation. We welcome |
| 228 contributions in many forms. Our membership consists of those individuals |
| 229 who have demonstrated a commitment to collaborative open-source software |
| 230 development through sustained participation and contributions within the |
| 231 Foundation's projects. Many people and companies have contributed towards |
| 232 the success of the Apache projects. |
| 233 |
| 234 ============================================================================ |
| 235 |
| 236 Why Apache Is Free |
| 237 |
| 238 Apache exists to provide a robust and commercial-grade reference |
| 239 implementation of the HTTP protocol. It must remain a platform upon which |
| 240 individuals and institutions can build reliable systems, both for |
| 241 experimental purposes and for mission-critical purposes. We believe the |
| 242 tools of online publishing should be in the hands of everyone, and |
| 243 software companies should make their money providing value-added services |
| 244 such as specialized modules and support, amongst other things. We realize |
| 245 that it is often seen as an economic advantage for one company to "own" a |
| 246 market - in the software industry that means to control tightly a |
| 247 particular conduit such that all others must pay. This is typically done |
| 248 by "owning" the protocols through which companies conduct business, at the |
| 249 expense of all those other companies. To the extent that the protocols of |
| 250 the World Wide Web remain "unowned" by a single company, the Web will |
| 251 remain a level playing field for companies large and small. Thus, |
| 252 "ownership" of the protocol must be prevented, and the existence of a |
| 253 robust reference implementation of the protocol, available absolutely for |
| 254 free to all companies, is a tremendously good thing. |
| 255 |
| 256 Furthermore, Apache is an organic entity; those who benefit from it |
| 257 by using it often contribute back to it by providing feature enhancements, |
| 258 bug fixes, and support for others in public newsgroups. The amount of |
| 259 effort expended by any particular individual is usually fairly light, but |
| 260 the resulting product is made very strong. This kind of community can |
| 261 only happen with freeware -- when someone pays for software, they usually |
| 262 aren't willing to fix its bugs. One can argue, then, that Apache's |
| 263 strength comes from the fact that it's free, and if it were made "not |
| 264 free" it would suffer tremendously, even if that money were spent on a |
| 265 real development team. |
| 266 |
| 267 We want to see Apache used very widely -- by large companies, small |
| 268 companies, research institutions, schools, individuals, in the intranet |
| 269 environment, everywhere -- even though this may mean that companies who |
| 270 could afford commercial software, and would pay for it without blinking, |
| 271 might get a "free ride" by using Apache. We would even be happy if some |
| 272 commercial software companies completely dropped their own HTTP server |
| 273 development plans and used Apache as a base, with the proper attributions |
| 274 as described in the LICENSE file. |
| 275 |
| 276 Thanks for using Apache! |
| 277 |
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