The Apache Software Foundation

Founders|

* Brian Behlendorf
* Ken Coar
* Mark Cox
* Lars Eilebrecht
* Ralf S. Engelschall
* Roy T. Fielding
* Dean Gaudet
* Ben Hyde
* Jim Jagielski
* Alexei Kosut
* Martin Kraemer
* Ben Laurie
* Doug MacEachern
* Aram Mirzadeh
* Sameer Parekh
* Cliff Skolnick
* Marc Slemko
* Bill Stoddard
* Paul Sutton
* Randy Terbush
* Dirk-Willem van Gulik

Type| 501(c)(3) organization
Focus| Open-source software
Location|

* Wakefield, Massachusetts, U.S.

Method| Apache License

Revenue (2023)

|  $2.31 million[1]
Expenses (2023)|  $2.01 million[1]
Website| apache.org

The Apache Software Foundation (/əˈpætʃi/ ə-PATCH-ee; ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) that supports a number of open-source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the Apache HTTP Server, and incorporated on March 25, 1999.[2][3] As of 2021,[update] it includes approximately 1000 members.[4]

The Apache Software Foundation is a decentralized open source community of developers. The software they produce is distributed under the terms of the Apache License, a permissive open-source license for free and open-source software (FOSS). The Apache projects are characterized by a collaborative, consensus-based development process and an open and pragmatic software license, which is to say that it allows developers, who receive the software freely, to redistribute it under non-free terms.[5] 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 of 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.[6]

The ASF also holds several Community Over Code conferences each year, highlighting Apache projects and related technology.[7]

## Contents

* 1 History
* 2 Projects
* 3 Board of directors
* 4 See also
* 5 Notes
* 6 Further reading
* 7 External links

## History

The history of the Apache Software Foundation is linked to the Apache HTTP Server, development beginning in February 1993. A group of eight developers started working on enhancing the NCSA HTTPd daemon. They came to be known as the Apache Group. On March 25, 1999, the Apache Software Foundation was formed.[2] The first official meeting of the Apache Software Foundation was held on April 13, 1999.[8] The initial members of the Apache Software Foundation consisted of the Apache Group: Brian Behlendorf, Ken Coar, Miguel Gonzales, Mark Cox, Lars Eilebrecht, Ralf S. Engelschall, Roy T. Fielding, Dean Gaudet, Ben Hyde, Jim Jagielski, Alexei Kosut, Martin Kraemer, Ben Laurie, Doug MacEachern, Aram Mirzadeh, Sameer Parekh, Cliff Skolnick, Marc Slemko, William (Bill) Stoddard, Paul Sutton, Randy Terbush and Dirk-Willem van Gulik.[8] After a series of additional meetings to elect board members and resolve other legal matters regarding incorporation, the effective incorporation date of the Apache Software Foundation was set to June 1, 1999.[3]

Co-founder Brian Behlendorf states how the name 'Apache' was chosen: "I suggested the name Apache partly because the web technologies at the time that were launching were being called cyber this or spider that or something on those themes and I was like we need something a little more interesting, a little more romantic, not to be a cultural appropriator or anything like that, I had just seen a documentary about Geronimo and the last days of a Native American tribe called the Apaches right, who succumbed to the invasion from the West, from the United States, and they were the last tribe to give up their territory and for me that almost romantically represented what I felt we were doing with this web-server project..."[9]

## Projects

See also: Organization:List of Apache Software Foundation projects

Apache divides its software development activities into separate semi-autonomous areas called "top-level projects" (formally known as a "Project Management Committee" in the bylaws[10]), some of which have a number of sub-projects. Unlike some other organizations that host FOSS projects, before a project is hosted at Apache it has to be licensed to the ASF with a grant or contributor agreement.[11] In this way, the ASF gains the necessary intellectual property rights for the development and distribution of all its projects.[12]

## Board of directors

The board of directors of The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is responsible for management and oversight of the business and affairs of the corporation in accordance with the Bylaws. This includes management of the corporate assets (funds, intellectual property, trademarks, and support equipment), appointment of a President and corporate officers managing the core operations of the ASF, and allocation of corporate resources for the benefit of Apache projects. Technical decision-making authority for every Apache project is assigned to their independent project management committee; the participants in each project provide direction, not the board. The board is elected annually by the ASF membership.[13]

Since March 6, 2025, the board of directors has been:[14][15][16][17]

* Rich Bowen
* Zili Chen
* Shane Curcuru
* Jim Jagielski
* Justin Mclean
* Jean-Baptiste Onofré
* Greg Stein
* Sander Striker
* Kanchana Welagedara

## See also

* List of Apache Software Foundation projects
* Apache Attic
* Apache Incubator
* Log4Shell
* CNCF
* Linux Foundation

## Notes

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Apache Software Foundation, Tax Filings – Nonprofit Explorer". Nonprofit Explorer. ProPublica. December 20, 2024. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/470825376.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Fielding, Roy T.. "Certificate of Incorporation of the Apache Software Foundation". https://www.apache.org/foundation/records/certificate.html.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Jagielski, Jim. "The Apache Software Foundation Board of Directors Meeting Minutes 01 June 1999". https://www.apache.org/foundation/records/minutes/1999/board_minutes_1999_06_01.txt.
4. ↑ "ASF Committers by auth group". 2021-07-02. http://home.apache.org/committers-by-project.html#member.
5. ↑ Smith, Brett (10 June 2011). "Statement on OpenOffice.org's move to Apache". https://www.fsf.org/news/openoffice-apache-libreoffice.
6. ↑ "Frequently Asked Questions". https://apache.org/foundation/faq.html#why.
7. ↑ "apachecon.com". apachecon.com. http://www.apachecon.com/.
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "The Apache Software Foundation: Board of Directors Meeting Minutes". 13 April 1999. https://www.apache.org/foundation/records/minutes/1999/board_minutes_1999_04_13.txt.
9. ↑ "Trillions and Trillions Served". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUt2nb0mgwg&t=249s.
10. ↑ "Bylaws of The Apache Software Foundation". Apache Software Foundation. https://www.apache.org/foundation/bylaws.html.
11. ↑ "Licenses". Apache Software Foundation. https://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas.
12. ↑ St. Amant, Kirk; Brian Still (2007). Handbook of research on open source software: technological, economic, and social perspectives. Idea Group Inc (IGI). pp. 217–219. ISBN 978-1-59140-999-1. https://books.google.com/books?id=75KT6GdcWbYC&q="apache+foundation"&pg=PA218. Retrieved December 4, 2020.
13. ↑ "Apache Corporate Governance". Apache Software Foundation. 2021. https://www.apache.org/foundation/governance/meetings.
14. ↑ Weber, Steve (2004). The success of open source. Harvard University Press. p. 187. ISBN 978-0-674-01292-9. https://archive.org/details/successofopensou00webe. "apache software foundation board of directors."
15. ↑ "Board of Directors". Apache Software Foundation. 2020. https://www.apache.org/foundation/board/.
16. ↑ "How the ASF works". Apache Software Foundation. 2010. https://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#structure.
17. ↑ "ASF History Project - Directors Timeline". https://apache.org/history/directors.html.

## Further reading

* Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (2006); Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams.

## External links

* Official website
* ApacheCon website
* "Trillions and Trillions Served" – Feature documentary by the Apache Software Foundation detailing its history and impact on the open-source software community (2020)

* v
* t
* e

Apache Software Foundation

Top-level
projects|

* Accumulo
* ActiveMQ
* Airflow
* Ambari
* Ant
* Apex
* Aries
* Apache HTTP Server
* APR
* Avro
* Axis
* Axis2
* Beam
* Bloodhound
* Brooklyn
* Buildr
* Calcite
* Camel
* CarbonData
* Cassandra
* Cayenne
* Chemistry
* CloudStack
* Cocoon
* Cordova
* CouchDB
* cTAKES
* CXF
* Derby
* Directory
* Drill
* Empire-db
* Felix
* Flex
* Flink
* Flume
* Forrest
* Geronimo
* Giraph
* Gump
* Hadoop
* Hama
* HBase
* Helix
* Hive
* Impala
* Jackrabbit
* James
* Jini
* JMeter
* Kafka
* Karaf
* Kudu
* Kylin
* Lucene
* Mahout
* Marmotta
* Maven
* MINA
* mod perl
* MyFaces
* NetBeans
* Nutch
* ODE
* OFBiz
* Oozie
* OpenEJB
* OpenJPA
* OpenNLP
* OрenOffice
* ORC
* PDFBox
* Parquet
* Phoenix
* POI
* Pig
* Pivot
* Qpid
* Roller
* RocketMQ
* Samza
* ServiceMix
* Shiro
* SINGA
* Sling
* Solr
* Spark
* Stanbol
* Storm
* SpamAssassin
* Sqoop
* Struts 1
* Struts 2
* Subversion
* SystemML
* Tapestry
* Thrift
* Tika
* Tomcat
* Trafodion
* Traffic Server
* UIMA
* Velocity
* Wicket
* Xalan
* Xerces
* Yetus
* ZooKeeper

Commons|

* BCEL
* BSF
* Daemon
* Jelly
* Logging

Incubator|

* MXNet
* Taverna
* XAP

Other projects|

* Batik
* Chainsaw
* FOP
* Ivy
* Log4j

Attic|

* Abdera
* AxKit
* Beehive
* Bluesky
* iBATIS
* Cactus
* Click
* Continuum
* Deltacloud
* Etch
* Excalibur
* Harmony
* HiveMind
* Jakarta
* Lenya
* Shale
* Shindig
* Slide
* stdcxx
* Tuscany
* Wave
* Wink
* XMLBeans

Licenses|

* Apache License

* Category

* v
* t
* e

Free and open-source software

General|

* Alternative terms for free software
* Comparison of open-source and closed-source software
* Comparison of source-code-hosting facilities
* Free software
* Free software project directories
* Gratis versus libre
* Long-term support
* Open-source software
* Open-source software development
* Outline

Software
packages|

* Audio
* Bioinformatics
* Codecs
* Collaboration
* Configuration management
* Device drivers
* Graphics
* Wireless
* Geophysics
* Health
* Mathematics
* Operating systems
* Programming languages
* Routing
* Statistics
* Television
* Video games
* Web applications
* Content management systems
* E-commerce
* Word processors
* Android apps
* iOS apps
* Commercial
* Trademarked
* Formerly proprietary

Community|

* Free software movement
* History
* Open-source-software movement
* Organizations
* Events

Licenses|

* AFL
* Apache
* APSL
* Artistic
* Beerware
* Boost
* BSD
* CC0
* CDDL
* EPL
* Free Software Foundation
* GNU GPL
* GNU LGPL
* ISC
* MIT
* MPL
* Ms-PL/RL
* Python
* Python Software Foundation License
* Sleepycat
* Unlicense
* WTFPL
* zlib

| Types and
standards|

* Comparison of free and open-source software licenses
* Contributor License Agreement
* Copyleft
* Debian Free Software Guidelines
* Definition of Free Cultural Works
* Free license
* The Free Software Definition
* The Open Source Definition
* Open-source license
* Permissive software license
* Public domain
* Viral license

|

Challenges|

* Digital rights management
* Firmware security
* Hardware restrictions
* License proliferation
* Mozilla software rebranding
* Proprietary device drivers
* Proprietary firmware
* Proprietary software
* SCO/Linux controversies
* Secure boot
* Software patents
* Software security
* Trusted Computing

Related topics|

* Forking
* GNU Manifesto
* Microsoft Open Specification Promise
* Open-core model
* Open-source hardware
* Shared Source Initiative
* Source-available software
* The Cathedral and the Bazaar
* Revolution OS

*   * Category
* Commons
* WikiProject
* Book

0.00

(0 votes)

Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The Apache Software Foundation. Read more

|

Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Organization:The_Apache_Software_Foundation&oldid=4110119"
*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template