The Apache HTTP Server Project

http://httpd.apache.org/

February 2002

The Apache Project is a collaborative software development effort aimed

at creating a robust, commercial-grade, featureful, and freely-available
source code implementation of an HTTP (Web) server. The project is
jointly managed by a group of volunteers located around the world, using
the Internet and the Web to communicate, plan, and develop the server and
its related documentation. These volunteers are known as the Apache Group.
In addition, hundreds of users have contributed ideas, code, and
documentation to the project. This file is intended to briefly describe
the history of the Apache Group, recognize the many contributors, and
explain how you can join the fun too.

In February of 1995, the most popular server software on the Web was the
public domain HTTP daemon developed by Rob McCool at the National Center
for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
However, development of that httpd had stalled after Rob left NCSA in
mid-1994, and many webmasters had developed their own extensions and bug
fixes that were in need of a common distribution. A small group of these
webmasters, contacted via private e-mail, gathered together for the purpose
of coordinating their changes (in the form of "patches"). Brian Behlendorf
and 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 and diskspace donated by HotWired and Organic Online.
By the end of February, eight core contributors 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
and worthwhile enhancements we could find, tested the result on our own
servers, and made the first official public release (0.6.2) of the Apache
server in April 1995. By coincidence, NCSA restarted their own development
during the same period, and Brandon Long and Beth Frank of the NCSA Server
Development Team joined the list in March as honorary members so that the
two projects could share ideas and fixes.

The early Apache server was a big hit, but we all knew that the codebase
needed a general overhaul and redesign. During May-June 1995, while
Rob Hartill and the rest of the group focused on implementing new features
for 0.7.x (like pre-forked child processes) and supporting the rapidly growing
Apache user community, Robert Thau designed a new server architecture
(code-named Shambhala) which included a modular structure and API for better
extensibility, pool-based memory allocation, and an adaptive pre-forking
process model. The group switched to this new server base in July and added
the features from 0.7.x, resulting in Apache 0.8.8 (and its brethren)
in August.
After extensive beta testing, many ports to obscure platforms, a new set
of documentation (by David Robinson), and the addition of many features
in the form 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 passed
NCSA's httpd as the #1 server on the Internet.

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

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

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

Current Apache Group in alphabetical order as of 2 April 2002:

Greg Ames IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA

Aaron Bannert California
Brian Behlendorf Collab.Net, California
Ken Coar IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA
Mark J. Cox Red Hat, UK
Lars Eilebrecht Freelance Consultant, Munich, Germany
Ralf S. Engelschall Cable & Wireless Deutschland, Munich, Germany
Justin Erenkrantz University of California, Irvine
Roy T. Fielding Day Software, California
Tony Finch Covalent Technologies, California
Dean Gaudet Transmeta Corporation, California
Dirk-Willem van Gulik Covalent Technologies, California
Brian Havard Australia
Ian Holsman CNET, California
Ben Hyde Gensym, Massachusetts
Jim Jagielski jaguNET Access Services, Maryland
Manoj Kasichainula Collab.Net, California
Alexei Kosut Stanford University, California
Martin Kraemer Munich, Germany
Ben Laurie Freelance Consultant, UK
Rasmus Lerdorf Yahoo!, California
Daniel Lopez Ridruejo Covalent Technologies, California
Doug MacEachern Covalent Technologies, California
Aram W. Mirzadeh CableVision, New York
Chuck Murcko The Topsail Group, Pennsylvania
Brian Pane CNET Networks, California
Sameer Parekh California
David Reid UK
William A. Rowe, Jr. Covalent, Illinois
Wilfredo Sanchez Apple Computer, California
Cliff Skolnick California
Marc Slemko Canada
Joshua Slive Canada
Greg Stein California
Bill Stoddard IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC
Sander Striker The Netherlands
Paul Sutton Seattle
Randy Terbush Covalent Technologies, California
Jeff Trawick IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC
Cliff Woolley University of Virginia

Apache Emeritus (old group members now off doing other things)
 Ryan Bloom California
Rob Hartill Internet Movie DB, UK
David Robinson Cambridge University, UK
Robert S. Thau MIT, Massachusetts
Andrew Wilson Freelance Consultant, UK

Other major contributors

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

Koen Holtman (rewrite of mod_negotiation),
Kevin Hughes (creator of all those nifty icons),
Brandon Long and Beth Frank (NCSA Server Development Team, post-1.3),
Ambarish Malpani (Beginning of the NT port),
Rob McCool (original author of the NCSA httpd 1.3),
Paul Richards (convinced the group to use remote CVS after 1.0),
Garey Smiley (OS/2 port), Henry Spencer (author of the regex library).

Thanks for using Apache!