The Apache HTTP Server Project is a collaborative software developmenteffort aimed at creating a robust, commercial-grade, featureful, andfreely-available source code implementation of an HTTP (Web) server. Theproject is jointly managed by a group of volunteers located around theworld, using the Internet and the Web to communicate, plan, and develop theserver and its related documentation. This project is part of the ApacheSoftware Foundation. In addition, hundreds of users have contributed ideas,code, and documentation to the project. This file is intended to brieflydescribe the history of the Apache HTTP Server and recognize the manycontributors.
Apache Licenses¶. The Apache Software Foundation uses various licenses to distribute software and documentation, to accept regular contributions from individuals and corporations, and to accept larger grants of existing software products. Apache Web Server is a mature and reliable web server that allows a site to serve web pages to the users. You can install WordPress site on Apache. Not only WordPress, but Apache is also compatible with all the popular CMSs like Joomla or Drupal. Compatibility is also a significant reason that Apache is so popular among web developers. Welcome to Apache.com! We are your complete Apache web server and server management resource. Whether you are an advanced expert or a complete novice, we have tips and information to help you! The Apache web server is easy to install. With one command, you can install it and all necessary dependencies: $ dnf install httpd All the configuration files for Apache are located in /etc/httpd/conf and /etc/httpd/conf.d. The Apache HTTP Server ('httpd') was launched in 1995 and it has been the most popular web server on the Internet since April 1996. It has celebrated its 25th birthday as a project in February 2020. The Apache HTTP Server is a project of The Apache Software Foundation. Apache httpd 2.4.46 Released 2020-08-07 ¶.
In February of 1995, the most popular server software on the Web was thepublic domain HTTP daemon developed by Rob McCool at the National Centerfor Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.However, development of that httpd had stalled after Rob left NCSA inmid-1994, and many webmasters had developed their own extensions and bugfixes that were in need of a common distribution. A small group of thesewebmasters, contacted via private e-mail, gathered together for the purposeof coordinating their changes (in the form of 'patches'). Brian Behlendorfand 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 corecontributors 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 andworthwhile enhancements we could find, tested the result on our ownservers, and made the first official public release (0.6.2) of the Apacheserver in April 1995. By coincidence, NCSA restarted their own developmentduring the same period, and Brandon Long and Beth Frank of the NCSA ServerDevelopment Team joined the list in March as honorary members so that thetwo projects could share ideas and fixes.
The early Apache server was a big hit, but we all knew that the codebaseneeded a general overhaul and redesign. During May-June 1995, while RobHartill and the rest of the group focused on implementing new features for0.7.x (like pre-forked child processes) and supporting the rapidly growingApache user community, Robert Thau designed a new server architecture(code-named Shambhala) which included a modular structure and API forbetter extensibility, pool-based memory allocation, and an adaptivepre-forking process model. The group switched to this new server base inJuly and added the features from 0.7.x, resulting in Apache 0.8.8 (and itsbrethren) in August.
After extensive beta testing, many ports to obscure platforms, a new set ofdocumentation (by David Robinson), and the addition of many features in theform 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 passedNCSA's httpd as the #1 server on the Internet and according to the surveyby Netcraft , it retains that positiontoday.
In 1999, members of the Apache Group formed the Apache SoftwareFoundation to provide organizational, legal, andfinancial support for the Apache HTTP Server. The foundation has placed thesoftware on a solid footing for future development, and greatly expandedthe number of Open Source software projects, which fall under thisFoundation's umbrella.
If you just want to send in an occasional suggestion/fix, then you cansimply use the bug reporting form at <http://httpd.apache.org/bug_report.html >. You can also subscribe tothe announcements mailing list (announce@httpd.apache.org)which we use to broadcast information about new releases, bugfixes, andupcoming 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 isfor people actively working on development of the server code. There isalso a 'docs' subproject for those who are actively developing andtranslating the documentation. If you have user/configuration questions,subscribe to the Users list or try the USENETnewsgroups '
There is a core group of contributors, formed initially of the projectfounders, and augmented from time to time by other outstandingcontributors. There are 'committers', who are granted access to the sourcecode control repositories to help maintain the project or docs, and thecore group now managing the project, which is called the Apache HTTPProject Management Committee (PMC, for short). In fact, each ApacheSoftware 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 youwill be allowed to do. The group founders set the original rules, but theycan be changed by vote of the active PMC members. There is a group ofpeople who have logins on our server and access to the source coderepositories. Everyone has read-only access to the repositories. Changes tothe code are proposed on the mailing list and usually voted on by activemembers -- three +1 ('yes' votes) and no -1 ('no' votes, or vetoes) areneeded to commit a code change during a release cycle; docs are usuallycommitted first and then changed as needed, with conflicts resolved bymajority vote.
Our primary method of communication is our mailing list. Approximately 40messages a day flow over the list, and are typically very conversational intone. We discuss new features to add, bug fixes, user problems,developments in the web server community, release dates, etc. The actualcode development takes place on the developers' local machines, withproposed changes communicated using a patch (output of a unified 'diff -uoldfile newfile' command), and then applied to the source code controlrepositories by one of the committers. Anyone on the mailing list can voteon a particular issue, but only those made by active members or people whoare known to be experts on that part of the server are counted towards therequirements for committing. Vetoes must be accompanied by a convincingtechnical justification.
New members of the Apache HTTP Project Management Committee are added whena frequent contributor is nominated by one member and unanimously approvedby the voting members. In most cases, this 'new' member has been activelycontributing to the group's work for over six months, so it's usually aneasy decision.
The project guidelines continuously evolve under the oversight of the PMC,as the membership of the group changes and our development/coordinationtools improve.
Apache Software exists to provide robust and commercial-grade referenceimplementations of many types of software. It must remain a platform uponwhich individuals and institutions can build reliable systems, both forexperimental purposes and for mission-critical purposes. We believe thatthe tools of online publishing should be in the hands of everyone, and thatsoftware companies should make their money by providing value-addedservices such as specialized modules and support, amongst other things. Werealize 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 aparticular conduit such that all others must pay for its use. This istypically done by 'owning' the protocols through which companies conductbusiness, at the expense of all those other companies. To the extent thatthe 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, theexistence of robust reference implementations of various protocols andapplication programming interfaces, available free to all companies andindividuals, is a tremendously good thing.
Furthermore, the Apache Software Foundation is an organic entity; those whobenefit from this software by using it, often contribute back to it byproviding feature enhancements, bug fixes, and support for others in publiclists and newsgroups. The effort expended by any particular individual isusually fairly light, but the resulting product is made very strong. Thesekinds of communities can only happen with freely available software -- whensomeone has paid for software, they usually aren't willing to fix its bugsfor free. One can argue, then, that Apache's strength comes from the factthat it's free, and if it were made 'not free' it would suffertremendously, even if that money were spent on a real development team.
Apache Http Server Vs Tomcat
We want to see Apache Software used very widely -- by large companies,small companies, research institutions, schools, individuals, in theintranet environment, everywhere -- even though this may mean thatcompanies who could afford commercial software, and would pay for itwithout blinking, might get a 'free ride' by using Apache. We are evenhappy when some commercial software companies completely drop their ownHTTP server development plans and use Apache as a base, with the properattributions as described in theLICENSE. That is to say, the Apache HTTPSever only comes from the Apache Software Foundation, but many vendors shiptheir own product 'based on the Apache {Project}'. There is no '{Vendor}Apache {Product}', this is an abuse of the Apache Software Foundation'smarks.