All Apache projects use the same pragmatic software license, the Apache
License v2. However, we recognise that there are other FOSS licences out
there, some of which are incompatible with the Apache License v2.

Code under these licenses cannot be hosted on Apache servers, but people
sometimes choose to, or are required to, use them.

Until the launch of apache-extras these projects had no a single
home to go to. They were spread across all of the various hosting
platforms. This made it difficult for communities to cluster around
related technologies. For us this was a problem since we believe strong
collaborative communities are the key to successful open source software.

Apache Extras provides these projects with a way to clearly signal their
relationship to one or more Apache project community. This will help
them attract developer communities to their own projects.