Forest Hill, MD, March 28, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced today its 18th Anniversary and accomplishments, and rallied support to ensure future innovation.
Millions of people have depended on Apache software since the ASF's beginnings in 1999. Today, the ASF has grown to become a leading source for hundreds of Open Source software projects that meet the demand for interoperable, adaptable, and sustainable solutions. Apache's enterprise-grade projects power mission-critical applications in financial services, aerospace, publishing, government, healthcare, research, infrastructure, and more.
"We are proud to celebrate our 18th Anniversary as one of the strongest and most emulated communities in Open Source," said ASF President Sam Ruby. "The ubiquity of Apache software across the globe attests to the trust in our projects and community. Our momentum demonstrates that the ASF has stayed true to our mission of producing software for the public good, and remains an influential force in accelerating the next generation of Open Source innovations."
The ASF serves approximately 9M source code downloads from Apache mirrors on a yearly basis (excluding convenience binaries). Worldwide dependency on Apache software continues to grow, with Web requests received from every Internet-connected country on the planet. https://projects.apache.org/statistics.html
Highlights include:
1) Membership --an increase of 2,952% from the inaugural 21 ASF Members to 620 Members today. ASF Membership comprises elected individuals who legally serve as the "shareholders" of the Foundation. This number is anticipated to increase following the next Apache Members’ Meeting (28-30 March 2017), when new Members are elected. https://www.apache.org/foundation/governance/members.html
2) Community --the ASF surpassed 6,000 project contributors (code and/or documentation) in February 2017. https://projects.apache.org/timelines.html . In addition to organic growth, the ASF participates in several community development activities, including Google Summer of Code (where the ASF has served as a mentoring organization since the program’s inception in 2005), as well as the ASF Travel Assistance program (that provides support to individuals attending ApacheCon, the ASF's official global conference series http://apachecon.com/ ). In addition, the Foundation maintains a Code of Conduct and initiated a new Diversity survey. http://community.apache.org/
3) Code and Contributions --the ASF is experiencing a greater influx of participants, with nearly 300 new code contributors and 300-400 new people filing issues each month. 31M (20%) of all Apache lines of code are comments --nearly three times as much as the entire Linux codebase-- underscoring the enormous scale of the ASF. The ASF's 100M functional lines of code (out of 150M+ total) have been developed over 65,000 person years, and are valued at US$7B. https://projects.apache.org/statistics.html
4) Projects --many of the ASF's 300+ projects today serve as the backbone for some of the world's most visible and widely used applications in Cloud (CouchDB, CloudStack, Mesos); Search and CMS (Derby, Jackrabbit, Lucene/Solr); DevOps and Build Management (Ant, Buildr, Maven); Servers (HTTP Web Server, Tomcat, Karaf, Traffic Server); and Web Frameworks (Flex, OFBiz, Struts), among other categories. From Abdera to ZooKeeper, Apache software continues to grow dramatically across many categories, including IoT and Edge Computing, Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning, Mobile, and Big Data, where the Apache Hadoop ecosystem dominates the marketplace. The Apache HTTP Server, the ASF's original project, remains the most popular Web server on the planet, with 887,000 new active sites this month, totalling nearly 80M active sites. https://projects.apache.org/
5) Innovation --the Apache Incubator is home to a record 64 "podlings" undergoing development. Emerging projects span numerous categories, including Big Data, communication protocols, connected devices, cryptography, data science/machine learning/analytics, development frameworks, microfinances, remote desktop access, serverless computing, and more. A total of 280 projects have gone through the ASF's Incubation process. http://incubator.apache.org/
Each day, programmers, solutions architects, individual users, educators, researchers, corporations, governments, enthusiasts, and others select Apache software as their "go-to" choice for development tools, libraries, frameworks, visualizers, end-user productivity solutions, and more. To date, millions of software solutions have been distributed under the Apache License to allow for their free use, modification, and sharing. https://www.apache.org/licenses/
All Apache products are available to the public-at-large completely free of charge. https://www.apache.org/free/
SUPPORT APACHE
At the ASF, software development and project leadership is done entirely by volunteers. The ASF Board and officers are all volunteers. The collective Apache community comprises thousands of tireless individuals committed to ensuring that Open Source software remains free. Their dedication is bolstered by the billions of users who benefit from Apache software, and the many communities who adopt "The Apache Way" process as part of their own operations. https://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html
"We are often asked 'How can I help?'," said Hadrian Zbarcea, Vice President ASF Fundraising. "Our goal is to raise needed funds to help ensure that Apache software projects continue to be freely available to users around the world. We are grateful for the support from all our Sponsors and donors, and invite everyone to make a contribution, no matter the size. Every dollar counts."
As a United States private, 501(c)(3) not-for-profit charitable organization, the ASF is funded through tax-deductible contributions from corporations, foundations, and private individuals. Their collective contributions offset day-to-day operating expenses such as bandwidth and connectivity, servers and hardware, legal and accounting services, brand management and public relations, general office expenditures, and support staff.
Approximately 75% of the ASF's US$1.2M annual budget is dedicated to running critical infrastructure support services. The ASF Infrastructure team of 10 rotating volunteers and 7 paid staff distributed on 4 continents keep Apache services running 24x7x365 at near 100% uptime on an annual budget of less than US$5,000 per project.
There are two ways to help the ASF reach its financial goals:
- Individual Donations --for one-off or recurring gifts of any size, via credit card, PayPal, ACH, and more.
- ASF Sponsorship program --for organizations, individuals, foundations, and endowments contributing $5,000 or more.
Donations to the ASF help underwrite the world's largest Open Source foundation and enrich the lives of countless users and developers across the globe. Employers with matching gift programs are invited to include the ASF as part of their philanthropic programs to generously increase donations to the ASF to support its mission. https://donate.apache.org/
"These charitable donations are gifts that benefit the greater Apache Community," added Ruby. "We hope to be able to thank as many of our supporters as possible in person at ApacheCon in Miami this May."
About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)
Established in 1999, the all-volunteer Foundation oversees more than 350 leading Open Source projects, including Apache HTTP Server --the world's most popular Web server software. Through the ASF's meritocratic process known as "The Apache Way," more than 620 individual Members and 6,000 Committers successfully collaborate to develop freely available enterprise-grade software, benefiting millions of users worldwide: thousands of software solutions are distributed under the Apache License; and the community actively participates in ASF mailing lists, mentoring initiatives, and ApacheCon, the Foundation's official user conference, trainings, and expo. The ASF is a US 501(c)(3) charitable organization, funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors including Alibaba Cloud Computing, ARM, Bloomberg, Budget Direct, Capital One, Cash Store, Cerner, Cloudera, Comcast, Confluent, Facebook, Google, Hortonworks, HP, Huawei, IBM, InMotion Hosting, iSigma, LeaseWeb, Microsoft, ODPi, PhoenixNAP, Pivotal, Private Internet Access, Produban, Red Hat, Serenata Flowers, Target, WANdisco, and Yahoo. For more information, visit http://www.apache.org/ and https://twitter.com/TheASF
© The Apache Software Foundation. "Apache", "Abdera", "Apache Abdera", "Ant", "Apache Ant", "Buildr", "Apache Buildr", "CloudStack", "Apache CloudStack", "CouchDB", "Apache CouchDB", "Derby", "Apache Derby" ,"Flex", "Apache Flex", "Apache HTTP Web Server", "Jackrabbit", "Apache Jackrabbit", "Karaf", "Apache Karaf", "Lucene/Solr", "Apache Lucene/Solr", "Maven", "Apache Maven", "Mesos", "Apache Mesos", "OFBiz", "Apache OFBiz", "Struts", "Apache Struts", "Tomcat", "Apache Tomcat", "Traffic Server", "Apache Traffic Server", "Zookeeper", "Apache Zookeeper", and "ApacheCon" are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation in the United States and/or other countries. All other brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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