d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes The Apache HTTP Server Project

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes http://www.apache.org/httpd

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes July 2000

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesThe Apache Project is a collaborative software development effort aimed

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesat creating a robust, commercial-grade, featureful, and freely-available

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholessource code implementation of an HTTP (Web) server. The project is

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesjointly managed by a group of volunteers located around the world, using

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesthe Internet and the Web to communicate, plan, and develop the server and

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesits related documentation. These volunteers are known as the Apache Group.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesIn addition, hundreds of users have contributed ideas, code, and

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesdocumentation to the project. This file is intended to briefly describe

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesthe history of the Apache Group, recognize the many contributors, and

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesexplain how you can join the fun too.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesIn February of 1995, the most popular server software on the Web was the

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholespublic domain HTTP daemon developed by Rob McCool at the National Center

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesfor Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesHowever, development of that httpd had stalled after Rob left NCSA in

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesmid-1994, and many webmasters had developed their own extensions and bug

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesfixes that were in need of a common distribution. A small group of these

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholeswebmasters, contacted via private e-mail, gathered together for the purpose

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesof coordinating their changes (in the form of "patches"). Brian Behlendorf

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesand Cliff Skolnick put together a mailing list, shared information space,

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesand logins for the core developers on a machine in the California Bay Area,

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholeswith bandwidth and diskspace donated by HotWired and Organic Online.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesBy the end of February, eight core contributors formed the foundation

5c0419d51818eb02045cf923a9fe456127a44c60wroweof the original Apache Group:

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Brian Behlendorf Roy T. Fielding Rob Hartill

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes David Robinson Cliff Skolnick Randy Terbush

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Robert S. Thau Andrew Wilson

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholeswith additional contributions from

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Eric Hagberg Frank Peters Nicolas Pioch

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesUsing NCSA httpd 1.3 as a base, we added all of the published bug fixes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesand worthwhile enhancements we could find, tested the result on our own

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesservers, and made the first official public release (0.6.2) of the Apache

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesserver in April 1995. By coincidence, NCSA restarted their own development

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesduring the same period, and Brandon Long and Beth Frank of the NCSA Server

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesDevelopment Team joined the list in March as honorary members so that the

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholestwo projects could share ideas and fixes.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesThe early Apache server was a big hit, but we all knew that the codebase

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesneeded a general overhaul and redesign. During May-June 1995, while

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesRob Hartill and the rest of the group focused on implementing new features

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesfor 0.7.x (like pre-forked child processes) and supporting the rapidly growing

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesApache user community, Robert Thau designed a new server architecture

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes(code-named Shambhala) which included a modular structure and API for better

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesextensibility, pool-based memory allocation, and an adaptive pre-forking

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesprocess model. The group switched to this new server base in July and added

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesthe features from 0.7.x, resulting in Apache 0.8.8 (and its brethren)

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesin August.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesAfter extensive beta testing, many ports to obscure platforms, a new set

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesof documentation (by David Robinson), and the addition of many features

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesin the form of our standard modules, Apache 1.0 was released on

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesDecember 1, 1995.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesLess than a year after the group was formed, the Apache server passed

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesNCSA's httpd as the #1 server on the Internet.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesThe survey by Netcraft (http://www.netcraft.com/survey/) shows that Apache

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesis today more widely used than all other web servers combined.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes ============================================================================

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesCurrent Apache Group in alphabetical order as of 27 July 2000:

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Brian Behlendorf Collab.Net, California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Ryan Bloom Covalent Technologies, California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Ken Coar IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Mark J. Cox Red Hat, England

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Lars Eilebrecht CyberSolutions, Munich, Germany

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Ralf S. Engelschall Munich, Germany.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Roy T. Fielding eBuilt, California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Tony Finch Covalent Technologies, California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Dean Gaudet Transmeta Corporation, California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Dirk-Willem van Gulik Covalent Technologies, California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Brian Havard Australia

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Ben Hyde Gensym, Massachusetts

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Jim Jagielski jaguNET Access Services, Maryland

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Manoj Kasichainula Collab.Net, California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Alexei Kosut Stanford University, California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Martin Kraemer Munich, Germany

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Ben Laurie Freelance Consultant, UK

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Rasmus Lerdorf Linuxcare, California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Daniel Lopez Ridruejo Covalent Technologies, California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Doug MacEachern Covalent Technologies, California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Aram W. Mirzadeh CableVision, New York

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Chuck Murcko The Topsail Group, Pennsylvania

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Sameer Parekh California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes David Reid UK

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes William A. Rowe, Jr. Freelance Consultant, Chicago area

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Wilfredo Sanchez Apple Computer, California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Cliff Skolnick California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Marc Slemko Canada

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Greg Stein California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Bill Stoddard IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Paul Sutton Seattle

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Randy Terbush Covalent Technologies, California

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesApache Emeritus (old group members now off doing other things)

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Rob Hartill Internet Movie DB, UK

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes David Robinson Cambridge University, UK

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Robert S. Thau MIT, Massachusetts

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Andrew Wilson Freelance Consultant, UK

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesOther major contributors

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Howard Fear (mod_include), Florent Guillaume (language negotiation),

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Koen Holtman (rewrite of mod_negotiation),

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Kevin Hughes (creator of all those nifty icons),

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Brandon Long and Beth Frank (NCSA Server Development Team, post-1.3),

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Ambarish Malpani (Beginning of the NT port),

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Rob McCool (original author of the NCSA httpd 1.3),

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Paul Richards (convinced the group to use remote CVS after 1.0),

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes Garey Smiley (OS/2 port), Henry Spencer (author of the regex library).

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesMany 3rd-party modules, frequently used and recommended, are also

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesfreely-available and linked from the related projects page:

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes<http://modules.apache.org/>, and their authors frequently

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholescontribute ideas, patches, and testing.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesHundreds of people have made individual contributions to the Apache

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesproject. Patch contributors are listed in the src/CHANGES file.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesFrequent contributors have included Petr Lampa, Tom Tromey, James H.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesCloos Jr., Ed Korthof, Nathan Neulinger, Jason S. Clary, Jason A. Dour,

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesMichael Douglass, Tony Sanders, Brian Tao, Michael Smith, Adam Sussman,

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesNathan Schrenk, Matthew Gray, and John Heidemann.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes ============================================================================

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesHow to become involved in the Apache project

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesThere are several levels of contributing. If you just want to send

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesin an occasional suggestion/fix, then you can just use the bug reporting

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesform at <http://www.apache.org/bug_report.html>. You can also subscribe

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesto the announcements mailing list (apache-announce@apache.org) which we

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesuse to broadcast information about new releases, bugfixes, and upcoming

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesevents. There's a lot of information about the development process (much

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesof it in serious need of updating) to be found at <http://dev.apache.org/>.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesIf you'd like to become an active contributor to the Apache project (the

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesgroup of volunteers who vote on changes to the distributed server), then

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesyou need to start by subscribing to the new-httpd@apache.org mailing list.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesOne warning though: traffic is high, 1000 to 1500 messages/month.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesTo subscribe to the list, send "subscribe new-httpd" in the body of

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesa message to <majordomo@apache.org>. We recommend reading the list for

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesa while before trying to jump in to development.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes NOTE: The developer mailing list (new-httpd@apache.org) is not

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes a user support forum; it is for people actively working on development

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes of the server code and documentation, and for planning future

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes directions. If you have user/configuration questions, send them

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes to the USENET newsgroup "comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix".

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesThere is a core group of contributors (informally called the "core")

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholeswhich was formed from the project founders and is augmented from time

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesto time when core members nominate outstanding contributors and the

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesrest of the core members agree. The core group focus is more on

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes"business" issues and limited-circulation things like security problems

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesthan on mainstream code development. The term "The Apache Group"

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholestechnically refers to this core of project contributors.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesThe Apache project is a meritocracy -- the more work you have done, the more

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesyou are allowed to do. The group founders set the original rules, but

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesthey can be changed by vote of the active members. There is a group

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesof people who have logins on our server (apache.org) and access to the

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesCVS repository. Everyone has access to the CVS snapshots. Changes to

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesthe code are proposed on the mailing list and usually voted on by active

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesmembers -- three +1 (yes votes) and no -1 (no votes, or vetoes) are needed

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesto commit a code change during a release cycle; docs are usually committed

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesfirst and then changed as needed, with conflicts resolved by majority vote.

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesOur primary method of communication is our mailing list. Approximately 40

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesmessages a day flow over the list, and are typically very conversational in

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholestone. We discuss new features to add, bug fixes, user problems, developments

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholesin the web server community, release dates, etc. The actual code development

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholestakes place on the developers' local machines, with proposed changes

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholescommunicated using a patch (output of a unified "diff -u oldfile newfile"

d5b12fe8ae917e654a33247fd4e59dc9e75170aebnicholescommand), and committed to the source repository by one of the core

developers using remote CVS. Anyone on the mailing list can vote on a

particular issue, but we only count those made by active members or people

who are known to be experts on that part of the server. Vetoes must be

accompanied by a convincing explanation.

New members of the Apache Group are added when a frequent contributor is

nominated by one member and unanimously approved by the voting members.

In most cases, this "new" member has been actively contributing to the

group's work for over six months, so it's usually an easy decision.

The above describes our past and current (as of July 2000) guidelines,

which will probably change over time as the membership of the group

changes and our development/coordination tools improve.

============================================================================

The Apache Software Foundation (www.apache.org)

The Apache Software Foundation exists to provide organizational, legal,

and financial support for the Apache open-source software projects.

Founded in June 1999 by the Apache Group, the Foundation has been

incorporated as a membership-based, not-for-profit corporation in order

to ensure that the Apache projects continue to exist beyond the participation

of individual volunteers, to enable contributions of intellectual property

and funds on a sound basis, and to provide a vehicle for limiting legal

exposure while participating in open-source software projects.

You are invited to participate in The Apache Software Foundation. We welcome

contributions in many forms. Our membership consists of those individuals

who have demonstrated a commitment to collaborative open-source software

development through sustained participation and contributions within the

Foundation's projects. Many people and companies have contributed towards

the success of the Apache projects.

============================================================================

Why Apache Is Free

Apache exists to provide a robust and commercial-grade reference

implementation of the HTTP protocol. It must remain a platform upon which

individuals and institutions can build reliable systems, both for

experimental purposes and for mission-critical purposes. We believe the

tools of online publishing should be in the hands of everyone, and

software companies should make their money providing value-added services

such as specialized modules and support, amongst other things. We realize

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 a

particular conduit such that all others must pay. This is typically done

by "owning" the protocols through which companies conduct business, at the

expense of all those other companies. To the extent that the 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 protocol must be prevented, and the existence of a

robust reference implementation of the protocol, available absolutely for

free to all companies, is a tremendously good thing.

Furthermore, Apache is an organic entity; those who benefit from it

by using it often contribute back to it by providing feature enhancements,

bug fixes, and support for others in public newsgroups. The amount of

effort expended by any particular individual is usually fairly light, but

the resulting product is made very strong. This kind of community can

only happen with freeware -- when someone pays for software, they usually

aren't willing to fix its bugs. One can argue, then, that Apache's

strength comes from the fact that it's free, and if it were made "not

free" it would suffer tremendously, even if that money were spent on a

real development team.

We want to see Apache used very widely -- by large companies, small

companies, research institutions, schools, individuals, in the intranet

environment, everywhere -- even though this may mean that companies who

could afford commercial software, and would pay for it without blinking,

might get a "free ride" by using Apache. We would even be happy if some

commercial software companies completely dropped their own HTTP server

development plans and used Apache as a base, with the proper attributions

as described in the LICENSE file.

Thanks for using Apache!