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FOREST HILL MD – 17 June 2008 – The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) – stewards, incubators, and developers of leading Open Source projects – today announced that both the organization's community and its meritocratic process (known as "the Apache Way") continues to gain recognition as one of the most influential, prominent, and innovative leaders in Open Source.
A midyear review of the initiatives underway at the all-volunteer Foundation showed that not only does the Apache HTTP Server continue to be the world's most popular Web server software, but numerous ASF Projects lead the way in Open Source technology, and the ASF community is also playing a vital role in championing the collaborative development of consensus-driven, enterprise-grade solutions.
"The demand for quality Open Source products continues to grow," said ASF Chairman Jim Jagielski. "A significant number of organizations depend on Apache-developed solutions. As the landscape continues to evolve, through our thought leadership, well-established process, and ability to spearhead new projects while maintaining an active, healthy community, we're poised to successfully deliver software that meets the demands of the marketplace and helps our users achieve their business goals."
The newly-redesigned ASF Website reflects how the Apache Way is realized through its new tagline, "Meritocracy in Action": more than 1,500 ASF Committers and countless contributors and users collaborate to the development of Apache-related activities across the Open Source landscape. The ASF are responsible for millions of lines of code and roughly one dozen servers comprising its infrastructure; nearly 500 community-driven modules have been developed to extend functionality of the Apache HTTP Server alone.
Board : The ASF recently held its Members' Meeting that included the election of the following Members to the ASF Board of Directors: Bertrand Delacretaz, Justin Erenkrantz, J. Aaron Farr, Jim Jagielski, Geir Magnusson Jr., William Rowe Jr., Sam Ruby, Henning Schmiedehausen, and Greg Stein.
The annually-elected ASF Board oversees the management of the Foundation; in turn, the Board appoints a set of officers to manage the day-to-day operations and oversee ASF Projects and initiatives.
Membership : The founding 21 individuals who oversaw the development of the Apache HTTP Server formed the Foundation's core membership. The group grew with the addition of "Committers": developers who contributed code, patches, or documentation, and were subsequently granted access by the Membership to: 1) "commit" or "write" directly to the code repository; 2) to vote on community-related decisions; and 3) propose an active user for Committership. Committers who demonstrate merit in the Foundation's growth, evolution, and progress are nominated for ASF Membership by existing members.
The ASF as a whole, including its Board, Officers, Members, and Committers, is composed of individuals participating solely on behalf of the Foundation. Whilst corporations are unable to qualify for Membership, those contributing to ASF projects who are employed by corporate entities are able to participate in ASF activities during "work time", but are expected to act as individuals, independent of their employer, unless stated otherwise under very specific circumstances. A key strength of the ASF is that affiliations do not cloud personal contributions – a prescript that applies to all Members.
The recent ASF Membership vote closed with the election of 17 new Members, totaling 276.
Sponsorship : The ASF is a private, 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization, funded solely through tax-deductible contributions from corporations, foundations, and individuals. To help offset day-to-day operating expenses, The ASF created its Sponsorship Program in late 2006. The Foundation welcomed two new sponsors:
Silver Level: IONA Technologies (NASDAQ: IONA)
Bronze Level: Matt Mullenweg
… to the following organizations and individuals whose generous contributions continue to help advance the work of The ASF:
Platinum Level: Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO)
Gold Level: HP (NYSE: HPQ)
Silver Level: Covalent
Bronze Level: AirPlus International, Tetsuya Kitahata, and Two Sigma Investments
ApacheCon : Now in its tenth year, the official user and developer conference, trainings, and expo of The Apache Software Foundation continues to explore some of the hottest topics in Open Source. The continued interest and increased adoption of Open Source technologies in Europe is reflected in the success of ApacheCon Europe held in Amsterdam in April, which boasted an increase in participation by 40%. ApacheCon US will be held in New Orleans on 3-7 November 2008, and will feature several enhancements to bring the Apache community of developers and users together, including expanded tracks, more Fast Feather presentations, the OFBiz Symposium (a dedicated "track" to the Apache Open For Business Project's suite of enterprise applications), as well as CampApache (a one-day, ad-hoc gathering with discussions, demos and interaction from participants to share and learn in an open environment).
Community Outreach : For the third consecutive year, the ASF is participating in the Google Summer of Code. As part of its ongoing mentorship on "the Apache Way", 32 ASF representatives have paired up with student developers from Algeria, Austria, Brazil, China, Croatia, France, India, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, the Ukraine, and the United States for the opportunity to collaborate on 78 different tasks using Apache Projects such as Axis2, Cayenne, Derby, Harmony, ODE, Roller, Sling, Solr, Tuscany, and Xerces2-J, as well as several projects in the Apache Incubator.
In addition, the Foundation had participated in the Google Highly Open Participation (GHOP) Contest, which concluded in February. This initiative tasked nearly 400 pre-university students worldwide to produce a variety of Open Source code, documentation, training materials and user experience research for ten participating organizations, including the ASF. Spencer Davis, GHOP Grand Prize winner chosen from the ASF's student contestants, will be joined by Bertrand Delacretaz, GHOP project administrator for the ASF, at the competition’s awards ceremony in July.
Project Achievements : With just two Projects (Apache HTTP Server, and the ApacheCon Conference Planning committee) at its inception, The ASF today comprises 62 Top-Level Projects (TLPs), 24 projects under Incubation (comprising both the codebase and its community, known as Podlings), and 20 active initiatives registered in the Apache Labs.
Each ASF Project is managed by a self-selected team of technical experts who actively contribute to the project according to the guidelines for collaborative development best suited to that particular project. The day-to-day activity of each TLP (and any sub-projects) is overseen by Project Management Committees (PMCs).
For twelve years running, the Apache HTTP Server remains the #1 Web server, powering more than 75 million Websites across the Internet, according to the Netcraft May 2008 Web Server Survey. In addition, the 1 June Web Server Survey by Security Space shows that Apache continues to hold 74% market penetration across all Web Server domains.
Both Incubating- and sub-projects continue to go from strength to strength. The following initiatives have graduated to ASF Top-Level Projects (TLPs):
Apache Hadoop (sub-project of Apache Lucene; PMC Chair: Owen O'Malley) — January 2008
Apache Continuum (sub-project of Apache Maven; PMC Chair: Emmanuel Venisse) — February 2008
Apache Archiva (sub-project of Apache Maven; PMC Chair: Maria Odea Ching) — March 2008
Apache CXF (from the Apache Incubator; PMC Chair: Daniel Kulp) — April 2008
Apache Tuscany (sub-project of Apache Web Services; PMC Chair: Ant Elder) — May 2008
Additional Project announcements include the release of: Apache HTTP Server 2.2.9; Apache Cocoon 2.2.0; Apache Portable Runtime 1.3.0; Apache Lucene Java 2.3.0; Apache Harmony 5.0M6; Apache Lenya 2.0; Apache CXF 2.1; Apache Wicket 1.3; Apache Jackrabbit 1.4; Apache Batik 1.7; Apache Axis2/C 1.3.0; Apache QPid 2.1.
Recognition and Awards : The ASF continues to garner ongoing recognition by editors, technical experts, writers, analysts, and other industry influencers. The "buzz" generated by many of The ASF's Projects are testament to its innovation and leadership within the Open Source community. Recent awards include:
Java Community Process (JCP) Member of the Year The ASF won its third Member of the Year prize awarded by the JCP Program Management Office. Geir Magnusson, Vice President of the ASF JCP committee and JCP Executive Committee member, accepted this prestigious award on behalf of the ASF at the JCP Spec Lead Dinner on 6 May. "The ASF has been active and engaged since the beginning, with wide participation at both the EC level and in projects, as members of Expert Groups," said Magnusson in his acceptance speech.
InfoWorld BOSSIE Award: Apache SpamAssassin won the InfoWorld "Best Of Open Source Software" BOSSIE Award, as the winner in the anti-spam category. According to InfoWorld "Our Bossie winner for anti-spam is the ubiquitous SpamAssassin. Powerful, extensible, and effective, SpamAssassin uses a trainable neural network engine to identify spam and minimize false positives, in addition to the classic techniques of blacklisting and Bayesian filtering."
Eclipse Community Award: Apache Directory Studio Apache Directory Studio finishes as runner-up for Best Open Source RCP Application at the Eclipse Community Awards announced on 18 March at EclipseCon. Earlier that week, the Apache Directory team announced the second release candidate for the version 1.1.0 Apache Directory Studio, its Eclipse based LDAP Browser and Directory client.
JAX Innovation Award: Apache Sling Barely six months under incubation, Apache Sling – the Web framework that uses a Java Content Repository, such as Apache Jackrabbit, to store and manage content – won a JAX Innovation Award on 25 April. The award was accepted on behalf of the project by Committers Carsten Ziegeler and Felix Meschberger, who were excited to spread the word that Apache Sling is "bringing back the fun (to Java development)!"
SD Times 100: Influencers; Application Servers The ASF topped the Software Development (SD) Times 100 list of Industry Influencers for the third year running. The sixth edition of these coveted awards was published on 2 June in recognition of the organizations or individuals that have demonstrated innovation and leadership in their markets. "Apache stayed on top of its game, continuing to offer enterprise-class sever software at a price not even Microsoft could match," stated the SD Times, bestowing Apache its third server award, highlighting Apache Geronimo powering proprietary server solutions, and Apache Tomcat as the most popular Java application server.
Users and developers interested in becoming involved with any of the above initiatives are invited to download software, join mailing lists, submit patches/bug fixes/documentation, and offer feedback through the Projects listed on the ASF Website.
Established in 1999, The Apache Software Foundation provides organizational, legal, and financial support for a broad range of Open Source software projects, including Apache HTTP Server — the world's most popular Web server software for more than a decade. The Foundation provides an established framework for intellectual property and financial contributions that simultaneously limits contributors' potential legal exposure. Through a collaborative and meritocratic development process, Apache projects deliver enterprise-grade, freely available software products that attract large communities of users. The pragmatic Apache License makes it easy for all users, commercial and individual, to deploy Apache products. For more information, please see http://www.apache.org/