github.com/krum110487/go-htaccess@v0.0.0-20240316004156-60641c8e7598/tests/data/apache_2_2_34/ABOUT_APACHE.txt (about)

     1  
     2                       The Apache HTTP Server Project
     3  
     4                          http://httpd.apache.org/
     5  
     6                               February 2002
     7  
     8  The Apache Project is a collaborative software development effort aimed
     9  at creating a robust, commercial-grade, featureful, and freely-available
    10  source code implementation of an HTTP (Web) server.  The project is
    11  jointly managed by a group of volunteers located around the world, using
    12  the Internet and the Web to communicate, plan, and develop the server and
    13  its related documentation.  These volunteers are known as the Apache Group.
    14  In addition, hundreds of users have contributed ideas, code, and
    15  documentation to the project.  This file is intended to briefly describe
    16  the history of the Apache Group, recognize the many contributors, and
    17  explain how you can join the fun too.
    18  
    19  In February of 1995, the most popular server software on the Web was the
    20  public domain HTTP daemon developed by Rob McCool at the National Center
    21  for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
    22  However, development of that httpd had stalled after Rob left NCSA in
    23  mid-1994, and many webmasters had developed their own extensions and bug
    24  fixes that were in need of a common distribution.  A small group of these
    25  webmasters, contacted via private e-mail, gathered together for the purpose
    26  of coordinating their changes (in the form of "patches").  Brian Behlendorf
    27  and Cliff Skolnick put together a mailing list, shared information space,
    28  and logins for the core developers on a machine in the California Bay Area,
    29  with bandwidth and diskspace donated by HotWired and Organic Online.
    30  By the end of February, eight core contributors formed the foundation
    31  of the original Apache Group:
    32  
    33     Brian Behlendorf        Roy T. Fielding          Rob Hartill
    34     David Robinson          Cliff Skolnick           Randy Terbush
    35     Robert S. Thau          Andrew Wilson
    36  
    37  with additional contributions from
    38  
    39     Eric Hagberg            Frank Peters             Nicolas Pioch
    40  
    41  Using NCSA httpd 1.3 as a base, we added all of the published bug fixes
    42  and worthwhile enhancements we could find, tested the result on our own
    43  servers, and made the first official public release (0.6.2) of the Apache
    44  server in April 1995.  By coincidence, NCSA restarted their own development
    45  during the same period, and Brandon Long and Beth Frank of the NCSA Server
    46  Development Team joined the list in March as honorary members so that the
    47  two projects could share ideas and fixes.
    48  
    49  The early Apache server was a big hit, but we all knew that the codebase
    50  needed a general overhaul and redesign.  During May-June 1995, while
    51  Rob Hartill and the rest of the group focused on implementing new features
    52  for 0.7.x (like pre-forked child processes) and supporting the rapidly growing
    53  Apache user community, Robert Thau designed a new server architecture
    54  (code-named Shambhala) which included a modular structure and API for better
    55  extensibility, pool-based memory allocation, and an adaptive pre-forking
    56  process model.  The group switched to this new server base in July and added
    57  the features from 0.7.x, resulting in Apache 0.8.8 (and its brethren)
    58  in August.
    59  
    60  After extensive beta testing, many ports to obscure platforms, a new set
    61  of documentation (by David Robinson), and the addition of many features
    62  in the form of our standard modules, Apache 1.0 was released on
    63  December 1, 1995.
    64  
    65  Less than a year after the group was formed, the Apache server passed
    66  NCSA's httpd as the #1 server on the Internet.
    67  
    68  The survey by Netcraft (http://www.netcraft.com/survey/) shows that Apache
    69  is today more widely used than all other web servers combined.
    70  
    71   ============================================================================
    72  
    73  Current Apache Group in alphabetical order as of 2 April 2002:
    74  
    75     Greg Ames              IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA
    76     Aaron Bannert          California
    77     Brian Behlendorf       Collab.Net, California 
    78     Ken Coar               IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA
    79     Mark J. Cox            Red Hat, UK
    80     Lars Eilebrecht        Freelance Consultant, Munich, Germany 
    81     Ralf S. Engelschall    Cable & Wireless Deutschland, Munich, Germany
    82     Justin Erenkrantz      University of California, Irvine
    83     Roy T. Fielding        Day Software, California 
    84     Tony Finch             Covalent Technologies, California
    85     Dean Gaudet            Transmeta Corporation, California 
    86     Dirk-Willem van Gulik  Covalent Technologies, California 
    87     Brian Havard           Australia
    88     Ian Holsman            CNET, California
    89     Ben Hyde               Gensym, Massachusetts
    90     Jim Jagielski          jaguNET Access Services, Maryland 
    91     Manoj Kasichainula     Collab.Net, California
    92     Alexei Kosut           Stanford University, California 
    93     Martin Kraemer         Munich, Germany
    94     Ben Laurie             Freelance Consultant, UK 
    95     Rasmus Lerdorf         Yahoo!, California
    96     Daniel Lopez Ridruejo  Covalent Technologies, California
    97     Doug MacEachern        Covalent Technologies, California
    98     Aram W. Mirzadeh       CableVision, New York 
    99     Chuck Murcko           The Topsail Group, Pennsylvania 
   100     Brian Pane             CNET Networks, California
   101     Sameer Parekh          California 
   102     David Reid             UK
   103     William A. Rowe, Jr.   Covalent, Illinois
   104     Wilfredo Sanchez       Apple Computer, California
   105     Cliff Skolnick         California
   106     Marc Slemko            Canada 
   107     Joshua Slive           Canada
   108     Greg Stein             California
   109     Bill Stoddard          IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC
   110     Sander Striker         The Netherlands
   111     Paul Sutton            Seattle
   112     Randy Terbush          Covalent Technologies, California 
   113     Jeff Trawick           IBM Corporation, Research Triangle Park, NC
   114     Cliff Woolley          University of Virginia
   115  
   116  Apache Emeritus (old group members now off doing other things)
   117  
   118     Ryan Bloom             California
   119     Rob Hartill            Internet Movie DB, UK 
   120     David Robinson         Cambridge University, UK
   121     Robert S. Thau         MIT, Massachusetts
   122     Andrew Wilson          Freelance Consultant, UK 
   123     
   124  Other major contributors
   125  
   126     Howard Fear (mod_include), Florent Guillaume (language negotiation),
   127     Koen Holtman (rewrite of mod_negotiation),
   128     Kevin Hughes (creator of all those nifty icons),
   129     Brandon Long and Beth Frank (NCSA Server Development Team, post-1.3),
   130     Ambarish Malpani (Beginning of the NT port),
   131     Rob McCool (original author of the NCSA httpd 1.3),
   132     Paul Richards (convinced the group to use remote CVS after 1.0),
   133     Garey Smiley (OS/2 port), Henry Spencer (author of the regex library).
   134  
   135  Many 3rd-party modules, frequently used and recommended, are also
   136  freely-available and linked from the related projects page:
   137  <http://modules.apache.org/>, and their authors frequently
   138  contribute ideas, patches, and testing.
   139  
   140  Hundreds of people have made individual contributions to the Apache
   141  project.  Patch contributors are listed in the CHANGES file.
   142  Frequent contributors have included Petr Lampa, Tom Tromey, James H.
   143  Cloos Jr., Ed Korthof, Nathan Neulinger, Jason S. Clary, Jason A. Dour,
   144  Michael Douglass, Tony Sanders, Brian Tao, Michael Smith, Adam Sussman,
   145  Nathan Schrenk, Matthew Gray, and John Heidemann.
   146  
   147   ============================================================================
   148  
   149  How to become involved in the Apache project
   150  
   151  There are several levels of contributing.  If you just want to send
   152  in an occasional suggestion/fix, then you can just use the bug reporting
   153  form at <http://httpd.apache.org/bug_report.html>.  You can also subscribe
   154  to the announcements mailing list (announce-subscribe@httpd.apache.org) which
   155  we use to broadcast information about new releases, bugfixes, and upcoming
   156  events.  There's a lot of information about the development process (much of
   157  it in serious need of updating) to be found at <http://httpd.apache.org/dev/>.
   158  
   159  If you'd like to become an active contributor to the Apache project (the
   160  group of volunteers who vote on changes to the distributed server), then
   161  you need to start by subscribing to the dev@httpd.apache.org mailing list.
   162  One warning though: traffic is high, 1000 to 1500 messages/month.
   163  To subscribe to the list, send an email to dev-subscribe@httpd.apache.org.
   164  We recommend reading the list for a while before trying to jump in to 
   165  development.
   166  
   167     NOTE: The developer mailing list (dev@httpd.apache.org) is not
   168     a user support forum; it is for people actively working on development
   169     of the server code and documentation, and for planning future
   170     directions.  If you have user/configuration questions, send them
   171     to users list <http://httpd.apache.org/userslist> or to the USENET
   172     newsgroup "comp.infosystems.www.servers.unix".or for windows users,
   173     the newsgroup "comp.infosystems.www.servers.ms-windows".
   174  
   175  There is a core group of contributors (informally called the "core")
   176  which was formed from the project founders and is augmented from time
   177  to time when core members nominate outstanding contributors and the
   178  rest of the core members agree.  The core group focus is more on
   179  "business" issues and limited-circulation things like security problems
   180  than on mainstream code development.  The term "The Apache Group"
   181  technically refers to this core of project contributors.
   182  
   183  The Apache project is a meritocracy -- the more work you have done, the more
   184  you are allowed to do.  The group founders set the original rules, but
   185  they can be changed by vote of the active members.  There is a group
   186  of people who have logins on our server (apache.org) and access to the
   187  CVS repository.  Everyone has access to the CVS snapshots.  Changes to
   188  the code are proposed on the mailing list and usually voted on by active
   189  members -- three +1 (yes votes) and no -1 (no votes, or vetoes) are needed
   190  to commit a code change during a release cycle; docs are usually committed
   191  first and then changed as needed, with conflicts resolved by majority vote.
   192  
   193  Our primary method of communication is our mailing list. Approximately 40
   194  messages a day flow over the list, and are typically very conversational in
   195  tone. We discuss new features to add, bug fixes, user problems, developments
   196  in the web server community, release dates, etc.  The actual code development
   197  takes place on the developers' local machines, with proposed changes
   198  communicated using a patch (output of a unified "diff -u oldfile newfile"
   199  command), and committed to the source repository by one of the core
   200  developers using remote CVS.  Anyone on the mailing list can vote on a
   201  particular issue, but we only count those made by active members or people
   202  who are known to be experts on that part of the server.  Vetoes must be
   203  accompanied by a convincing explanation.
   204  
   205  New members of the Apache Group are added when a frequent contributor is
   206  nominated by one member and unanimously approved by the voting members.
   207  In most cases, this "new" member has been actively contributing to the
   208  group's work for over six months, so it's usually an easy decision.
   209  
   210  The above describes our past and current (as of July 2000) guidelines,
   211  which will probably change over time as the membership of the group
   212  changes and our development/coordination tools improve.
   213  
   214   ============================================================================
   215  
   216  The Apache Software Foundation (www.apache.org)
   217  
   218  The Apache Software Foundation exists to provide organizational, legal,
   219  and financial support for the Apache open-source software projects.
   220  Founded in June 1999 by the Apache Group, the Foundation has been
   221  incorporated as a membership-based, not-for-profit corporation in order
   222  to ensure that the Apache projects continue to exist beyond the participation
   223  of individual volunteers, to enable contributions of intellectual property
   224  and funds on a sound basis, and to provide a vehicle for limiting legal
   225  exposure while participating in open-source software projects. 
   226  
   227  You are invited to participate in The Apache Software Foundation. We welcome
   228  contributions in many forms.  Our membership consists of those individuals
   229  who have demonstrated a commitment to collaborative open-source software
   230  development through sustained participation and contributions within the
   231  Foundation's projects.  Many people and companies have contributed towards
   232  the success of the Apache projects. 
   233  
   234   ============================================================================
   235  
   236  Why Apache Is Free
   237  
   238  Apache exists to provide a robust and commercial-grade reference
   239  implementation of the HTTP protocol.  It must remain a platform upon which
   240  individuals and institutions can build reliable systems, both for
   241  experimental purposes and for mission-critical purposes.  We believe the
   242  tools of online publishing should be in the hands of everyone, and
   243  software companies should make their money providing value-added services
   244  such as specialized modules and support, amongst other things.  We realize
   245  that it is often seen as an economic advantage for one company to "own" a
   246  market - in the software industry that means to control tightly a
   247  particular conduit such that all others must pay.  This is typically done
   248  by "owning" the protocols through which companies conduct business, at the
   249  expense of all those other companies.  To the extent that the protocols of
   250  the World Wide Web remain "unowned" by a single company, the Web will
   251  remain a level playing field for companies large and small. Thus,
   252  "ownership" of the protocol must be prevented, and the existence of a
   253  robust reference implementation of the protocol, available absolutely for
   254  free to all companies, is a tremendously good thing.  
   255  
   256  Furthermore, Apache is an organic entity; those who benefit from it
   257  by using it often contribute back to it by providing feature enhancements,
   258  bug fixes, and support for others in public newsgroups.  The amount of
   259  effort expended by any particular individual is usually fairly light, but
   260  the resulting product is made very strong.  This kind of community can
   261  only happen with freeware -- when someone pays for software, they usually
   262  aren't willing to fix its bugs.  One can argue, then, that Apache's
   263  strength comes from the fact that it's free, and if it were made "not
   264  free" it would suffer tremendously, even if that money were spent on a
   265  real development team.
   266  
   267  We want to see Apache used very widely -- by large companies, small
   268  companies, research institutions, schools, individuals, in the intranet
   269  environment, everywhere -- even though this may mean that companies who
   270  could afford commercial software, and would pay for it without blinking,
   271  might get a "free ride" by using Apache.  We would even be happy if some
   272  commercial software companies completely dropped their own HTTP server
   273  development plans and used Apache as a base, with the proper attributions
   274  as described in the LICENSE file.
   275  
   276  Thanks for using Apache!
   277