[windows_errors] [what_error_messages_really_mean_ApacheServers] What IS the Apache HTTP Server Project?
- From: "markb12000" <mark.brent@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: what_error_messages_really_mean_ApacheServers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 23:39:45 -0000
What IS the Apache HTTP Server Project?
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 and
recognize the many contributors.
How Apache Came to Be
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 donated by HotWired. 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 and according to the
survey by Netcraft, it retains that position today.
In 1999, members of the Apache Group formed the Apache Software
Foundation to provide organizational, legal, and financial support
for the Apache HTTP Server. The foundation has placed the software on
a solid footing for future development.
Getting Involved
If you just want to send in an occasional suggestion/fix, then you
can just use the bug reporting form at
<http://httpd.apache.org/bug_report.html>. You can also subscribe to
the announcements mailing list (announce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) which we
use to broadcast information about new releases, bugfixes, and
upcoming 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 is
for people actively working on development of the server code and
documentation, and for planning future directions. If you have
user/configuration questions, send them to the Users list or the
USENET newsgroup "comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix"
or "comp.infosystems.www.servers.ms-windows" (as appropriate for the
platform you use).
Development
There is a core group of contributors (informally called the "core")
which was formed from the project founders and is augmented from time
to time when core members nominate outstanding contributors and the
rest of the core members agree. The core group focus is more
on "business" issues and limited-circulation things like security
problems than on mainstream code development. The term "The Apache
Group" technically refers to this core of project contributors.
The Apache Group is a meritocracy -- the more work you have done, the
more you are allowed to do. The group founders set the original
rules, but they can be changed by vote of the active members. There
is a group of people who have logins on our server and access to the
CVS repository. Everyone has access to the CVS snapshots. Changes to
the code are proposed on the mailing list and usually voted on by
active members -- three +1 (yes votes) and no -1 (no votes, or
vetoes) are needed to commit a code change during a release cycle;
docs are usually committed first and then changed as needed, with
conflicts resolved by majority vote.
Our primary method of communication is our mailing list.
Approximately 40 messages a day flow over the list, and are typically
very conversational in tone. We discuss new features to add, bug
fixes, user problems, developments in the web server community,
release dates, etc. The actual code development takes place on the
developers' local machines, with proposed changes communicated using
a patch (output of a unified "diff -u oldfile newfile" command), 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 January 1998)
guidelines, which will probably change over time as the membership of
the group changes and our development/coordination tools improve.
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.
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