World’s largest Open Source foundation’s all-volunteer community makes a difference in the lives of billions of users.
Wakefield, MA —26 March 2018— The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, announced today its 19th Anniversary, and its meritocratic, community-driven process known as "The Apache Way" as the key to its success.
The world’s largest Open Source foundation is home to dozens of freely-available (no cost), enterprise-grade Apache projects that serve as the backbone for some of the most visible and widely used applications in Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning, Big Data, Build Management, Cloud Computing, Content Management, DevOps, IoT and Edge Computing, Mobile, Servers, and Web Frameworks, among many other categories. Examples of the breadth of applications that are "Powered by Apache" include:
- 80M+ Websites that use the Apache HTTP Server;
- the 2.6-terabyte, Pulitzer Prize-winning Panama Papers investigation;
- system-wide information management at the US Federal Aviation Administration;
- 500+B daily event capture each day at Netflix;
- mobile application development unification across Android/Blackberry/iOS/Ubuntu/Windows/Windows Phone/OS X platforms;
- request processing at Facebook’s 300-petabyte data warehouse;
- powering clouds for Apple, Disney, Huawei, Tata, and countless others; and
- accessing content across multi-mission, multi-instrument science data systems at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"As we celebrate 19 years of Open Source collaboration, we have a lot to be thankful for at the ASF," said ASF Chairman Phil Steitz. "First, the many volunteers who contribute to our projects. Some have been contributing continuously since inception and many more join us every year. We now have 6,618 committers, with 504 added just in the last year. Second, we are fortunate to have the constant inflow of new people and communities keeping the ASF on the cutting edge of new technologies. Finally, we receive generous support from 48 corporate sponsors and thousands of individual donors. As we approach the end of our ‘teenage’ years, the ASF stands as a vibrant, healthy, leading organization committed to our mission of providing software for the public good by supporting collaborative, open development communities."
Highlights of the Apache community’s successes over the past 12 months include:
- continued guardianship of 190M+ lines of code in the Apache repositories;
- 9M+ source code downloads from Apache mirrors (excl. convenience binaries);
- 3,255 Committers changed 71,186,324 lines of code over 225,500 commits;
- 194 Top-Level Project committees managing 319 projects;
- 20 new Top-Level Projects graduated from the Apache Incubator;
- 54 podlings currently undergoing development in the Apache Incubator;
- 21,893 authors sent 1,771,557 emails on 662,661 topics across 1,131 mailing lists;
- Web requests received from every Internet-connected country on the planet; and
- 35M page views per week across apache.org.
"The Apache Software Foundation’s extraordinary contribution to the economic refactoring of software stacks seems to be gaining more momentum with every passing year," wrote Merv Adrian, Analyst and Research Vice President at Gartner. "…the role of the ASF remains so important: by providing a vehicle for developers to work ‘in the open,’ while keeping the playing field level in many respects, the ASF has enabled the rapid development and pervasive spread of key layers that everyone benefits from." https://blogs.gartner.com/merv-adrian/?p=1213
At the heart of the ASF is its people: Apache software development and project leadership is executed entirely by volunteers. The ASF Board and officers are all volunteers. The dedication of 706 individual ASF Members and thousands of committed volunteers helps make a difference to the lives of billions by ensuring that Apache software remains accessible to all, and always 100% free of charge. Their allegiance is testament to the slogan of "Community Over Code" often paired with The Apache Way that ensures the ASF delivers on its mission of providing Open Source software for the public good.
As a United States private, 501(c)(3) not-for-profit charitable organization, the ASF relies on charitable donations to advance the future of open development, and is sustained by through tax-deductible contributions from generous corporations, foundations, and individuals. Their contributions help offset day-to-day operating expenses that include bandwidth, connectivity, servers, hardware, legal counsel, accounting services, trademark protection, public relations, marketing, and related support staff. As a very lean operation, the ASF spends 10% or less on overhead.
ASF Sponsors include: PLATINUM –Cloudera, Comcast, Facebook, Google, LeaseWeb, Microsoft, Oath, Pineapple Fund; GOLD –ARM, Bloomberg, Hortonworks, Huawei, IBM, ODPi, Pivotal; SILVER –Aetna, Alibaba Cloud Computing, Budget Direct, Capital One, Cash Store, Cerner, Inspur, iSIGMA, Private Internet Access, Red Hat, Serenata Flowers, Target, Union Investment, and Wandisco; BRONZE –7 Binary Options, Airport Rentals, The Blog Starter, Bookmakers, Casino2k, Compare Forex Brokers, HostChecka.com, HostingAdvice.com, HostPapa Web Hosting, The Linux Foundation, Mobile Slots, SCAMS.info, Spotify, Talend, Travel Ticker Hotels, Twitter, Web Hosting Secret Revealed, Wise Buyer.
In addition, the ASF recently announced its new Targeted Sponsors, who provide the Foundation with contributions for specific activities or programs, such as donating cloud services, funding a project hackathon, providing legal services, offering a member benefit, underwriting expenses for ApacheCon, or something entirely new. It’s the Apache way of recognizing the sponsors that we rely on every day outside of and often in addition to funding our general operations. ASF Targeted Sponsors include: PLATINUM –Microsoft, Oath, OSU Open Source Labs, Sonatype; GOLD –Atlassian, The CrytpoFund, Datadog, PhoenixNAP; SILVER –Amazon Web Services, HotWax Systems, Quenda, Rackspace; BRONZE –Assembla, Bintray, Education Networks of America, Google, Hopsie, No-IP, PagerDuty, Sonic.net, SURFnet, Virtru.
"For Airport Rentals, the Apache Way is a way of life. The pillars of collaborative decision making and granting everyone an equal voice are integral to the ethos of the company. Giving everyone a chance to share ideas, craft plans and pioneer initiatives has allowed Airport Rentals to remain agile and creative in a field which demands constant improvement. Without these cornerstones, the company would not be in the position it is today."
–Thomas Schmider, SEO Marketing Executive at Airport Rentals
"Auto & General is proud to have now supported the Apache foundation for many years. We’re big believers in Open Source software, and the work Apache does, and thank all involved for their tireless work over the last 19 years."
–Paul Malt, Chief Information Officer at Auto & General
"The Apache Way gives every developer the opportunity to provide leadership through their contributions to the community. We’re proud that the Apache community has recognized the contributions of our developers and asked them to become committers and PMC members."
–Kevin Fleming, Head of Open Source Community Engagement at Bloomberg
"My computer science experience started with Apache HTTP Server a long time ago, just for fun. Then I become System Administrator and now Chief Information Officer. ASF knowledge guided for more than 10 years and is one of the reasons of my personal success. Keep Going!"
–Claudio Gianolla, CIO at Casino2k.com
"The Apache Software Foundation’s focus an open-source environment with a strong community focus helps Cerner focus on solving hard problems in the health care IT space. The Apache Way means Cerner not only has access to high-quality projects, but also can engage with rich communities, asking questions, contributing patches, and sharing knowledge."
–Micah Whitacre, Associate Principal Engineer at Cerner
"The Apache Software Foundation is moving open source forward on many fronts. We especially value its focus on building sustainable communities that ensure the continuing innovation and development of important projects."
–Jan van Doorn, Fellow at Comcast, and Apache Traffic Control (incubating) committer
"The ASF, and Apache OFBiz in particular, are central to our business. The value we derive from the ASF and the Apache Way is a large part of what drives our business forward. Proud to be a part of this amazing Open Source organization."
–Mike Bates, CEO at HotWax Systems
"The Apache Software Foundation is an anchor for open source projects that the world depends on across Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning, Big Data, Cloud Computing, DevOps, IoT and Edge Computing, Mobile, Servers, and Web Frameworks, among other categories. With over 350 projects across the ASF, Apache continues to drive innovation in the industry and IBM is proud to have been there from the beginning and looks forward to continued contributions and collaboration for many years to come."
–Todd Moore, Vice President of IBM Open Technology
"Congratulations to the Apache Software Foundation on their 19 year anniversary of helping to make critical open source projects possible. Today, most companies are using software from Apache projects. The Internet (and Leaseweb’s global cloud platforms) would not be possible without them. Thank you for your amazing work!"
–Robert van der Meulen, Product Strategy Lead at Leaseweb
"Many of our customers rely upon ASF for projects on Microsoft Azure. The Apache Way helps ensure that our engineers can work with them, our partners and the ecosystem at large efficiently and at scale."
–John Gossman, Lead Architect at Microsoft
"Teams at Oath actively contribute to Apache projects, such as Traffic Server, Hadoop, and Storm, and are helping incubate new projects like Druid, Omid, and Pulsar. We’re proud to be part of some of the world’s most important open source projects. Inspired by the Apache Way, we know that all code gets better when we work together to solve challenging engineering problems."
–Gil Yehuda, Senior Director of Open Source at Oath
"We celebrate the Apache Software Foundation and its community development for nearly two decades. ODPi has always strived to build upon the innovative work of the ASF to help create a thriving and expanding Big Data ecosystem built around the success of Apache Hadoop, Apache Bigtop, Apache Atlas and many others. We believe our focus on the downstream Hadoop ecosystem carries on the work of the ASF and helps oxygenate the big data market and stimulate growth."
–John Mertic, program director at ODPi
"Our goal is to build the most open cloud and advanced data management tools for all businesses. We see active participation within open source communities as essential to this mission. We have been working with the Apache Software Foundation since Pivotal’s founding in 2013. The Apache Software Foundation’s philosophy, particularly the culture of a ‘do-ocracy’ resonates strongly for us. We look forward to our continued work together to drive the development of open source cloud and data solutions for enterprises."
–Elisabeth Hendrickson, Vice President, R&D for Data at Pivotal
"Target has benefited from the openness and availability of many ASF projects over the years. Projects like Kafka, Spark, Zookeeper, Avro and so many more enjoy the benefits of running open source projects in the Apache Way. It’s good for the projects themselves and for the companies and users who benefit from it."
–Dan Cundiff, Principal Engineer at Target Corporation
"Union Investment operates its essential core services on software from various ASF projects. And new services based on ASF projects will follow. Why are we so ASF-focused?! Because we believe in the quality and innovation of the software coming from ASF projects. It helps us mastering the future."
–Parto Chobeiry, Head of Middle Office Application Management at Union Investment
"I am a big believer in the "open-source" way and a big fan of Apache. To be on Apache’s Sponsors list is a huge honour to WHSR (https://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/) and myself personally. As a small business established in third world country, we wouldn’t have grew into what we are today without the help of the open source and web developer community. So thank you Apache. Thank you for working tirelessly for the past 19 years. Thank you for making our world and the open source community a better place today."
–Jerry Low, Founder at Web Hosting Secret Revealed
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 700 individual Members and 6,600 Committers successfully collaborate to develop freely available enterprise-grade software, benefiting billions 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 Aetna, Alibaba Cloud Computing, ARM, Bloomberg, Budget Direct, Capital One, Cash Store, Cerner, Cloudera, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Hortonworks, Huawei, IBM, Inspur, iSIGMA, LeaseWeb, Microsoft, Oath, ODPi, Pineapple Fund, Pivotal, Private Internet Access, Red Hat, Serenata Flowers, Target, Union Investment, and WANdisco. For more information, visit http://www.apache.org/ and https://twitter.com/TheASF
© The Apache Software Foundation. "Apache", "Apache HTTP Server", 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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