The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) was founded in 1999 and at that time had 21 members and the same web server as the only project. Today, the Foundation owns 730 individual members, 110 more than two years ago, and about 7,000 developers who contribute code (“committers”). The number of Apache projects has increased to 300. Another 52 are being prepared in the incubator to become official Apache projects. Common to all of them is the Apache License 2.0, a free license that permits any use of the software, even incorporation into proprietary software. Apache is funded by donations from some companies and, in return, offers companies and individual developers a neutral collaboration platform.
The 20-year anniversary was celebrated by the ASF with a whole series of blog posts, which are entitled “Success at Apache” and also “The Apache Way,” Apache’s chosen approach to open source, explain. The statutes of the organization state that it develops “for the public good” software. The Apache Way consists of five basic principles: Everyone is allowed to participate and his influence is based exclusively and completely on what and how much he contributes. Only individuals can participate in the ASF, even if they are paid by organizations or companies, and all are equal. It is required that every project communication is public. Decisions are made amicably in the projects. If this is not possible, a majority vote must be found for a decision. The Apache projects largely manage themselves, but they must regularly report to the Apache Board. Each employee is responsible for adhering to the policies, security, and protection of the Apache brand and the Apache community.
The Apache projects together have a volume of over 200 million lines. The work in the code of the Apache projects is estimated to be worth at least $ 20 billion. The Apache projects include the eponymous web server, which is the most widely used worldwide, cloud projects (CouchDB, CloudStack, Mesos), search and content management systems (Derby, Jackrabbit, Lucene / Solr), DevOps, and code engines. Generation (Ant, Buildr, Maven), Server (Tomcat, Karaf, Traffic Server), Web-Frameworks (Flex, OFBiz, Struts), Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data (Kafka, Spark, Hadoop and others).
Source: https://www.pro-linux.de/news/1/26912/20-jahre-apache-software-foundation.html
Submitted by: Arnfried Walbrecht
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