Apache has been at the forefront of dozens of today's industry-defining technologies and tools; nearly every end-user computing device has been touched by at least one Apache product.

Budapest, Hungary –19 November– At ApacheCon Europe, members of the Apache community commemorated The Apache Software Foundation (ASF)'s fifteenth anniversary and congratulated the people, projects, initiatives, and organizations that played a role in its success.

Recognized as the leader in community-led Open Source software development, the ASF was established to shepherd, develop, and incubate Open Source innovations "The Apache Way". Reflections on achievements over the past 15 years include:

Apache products power half the Internet, manage exabytes of data, execute teraflops of operations, store billions of objects in virtually every industry, and enhance the lives of countless users and developers worldwide. Apache projects power mission-critical applications in financial services, aerospace, publishing, big data, Cloud computing, mobile, government, healthcare, research, infrastructure, development frameworks, foundational libraries, and many other categories. Beginning with the Apache HTTP Server —the world's most popular Web server— Apache software has been at the forefront of dozens of today's industry-defining technologies and tools, playing an integral role in nearly every end-user computing device, from laptops to tablets to mobile phones.

Apache software is so ubiquitous that 50% of the top 10 downloaded Open Source products are Apache projects. The commercially-friendly and permissive Apache License v2 has become an industry standard within the Open Source world. The Apache License and open development model are widely recognized as among the best ways to ensure open standards gain traction and adoption. The ASF offers a vendor-neutral space in which to collaborate whilst enabling third parties to pursue almost any for-profit or not-for-profit business model. To date, hundreds of thousands of software solutions have been distributed under the Apache License.

Amazingly, this is achieved by an all-volunteer community comprising 505 individual Members and 4,081 Apache Committers collaborating across six continents. The ASF's day-to-day operating expenses are offset by the generous sponsorship of individual donors and corporate sponsors including Citrix, Cloudera, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Hortonworks, HP, IBM, Matt Mullenweg, Microsoft, and Yahoo.

"ASF @ 15" Timeline and Highlights follow. Visit http://apache.org/ and @TheASF on Twitter for more information.

Highlights: pre-1999
Brian Behlendorf started collecting patches to be applied to the last version of the NCSA http server. The Apache Group, consisting of 8 individuals, traded patches on a mailing list set up for the purpose. In April of 1995 the first public release of Apache (version 0.6.2) came out. Apache 1.0 released on December 1, 1995, and within a year surpassed NCSA as the most-used Web server.

Highlights: 1999
The ASF formally incorporates as a Delaware-based 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation from The Apache Group on 1 June. Original directors are: Brian Behlendorf (President), Ken Coar (VP Conferences), Roy T. Fielding (Chairman), Ben Hyde (VP Apache HTTP Server Project), Jim Jagielski (Secretary and EVP), Ben Laurie, Sameer Parekh, Randy Terbush (Treasurer), and Dirk-Willem van Gulik. New Apache Jakarta and XML Projects join the Apache HTTP Server Project. Board Committees on ASF Conferences, Licenses, and Security are formed. Discussions about ASF's role as an Open Source incubator address fostering new technologies such as Cocoon. The ASF receives numerous industry awards, including the ACM Software System Award, the Datamation Product of the Year, and LinuxWorld Editor's Award. ASF is listed in the Industry Standard's "100 Companies That Matter" and included in the ServerWatch Hall of Fame.

Highlights: 2000
Perl-Apache Project, as well as Apache PHP, Apache/TCL Project, and Apache Portable Runtime Project are established. Apache Struts, Batik, FOP, and Ant undergo "incubation". The ASF draws record attendance at the second ApacheCon in Orlando (the first-ever conference was held in San Francisco in 1998), and launches its first European event in London later that year.

Highlights: 2001
Apache Avalon, Commons, and Jetspeed/Portals undergo "incubation". Work begins on next version of the Apache License. The fourth ApacheCon is held in Santa Clara, where the ASF maxim of "Community Over Code" is widespread and collaborators meet in person for the very first time. The ASF receives the Internet Service Providers Association's Internet Industry Awards for "Best Software Supplier" Apache XML's Xalan-Java 1.2.2 is a finalist in the Best Java-XML Application category in the JavaWorld Editors' Choice Awards.

Highlights: 2002
Participation in The ASF booms; its process for community and collaborative development becomes known as "the Apache Way". New Board is formed: Greg Stein elected Chairman, Dirk-Willem van Gulik as President, Randy Terbush as Treasurer (later replaced that year by Chuck Murko), and Jim Jagielski as Executive Vice President/Secretary. Apache Jakarta launches sub-project BSF; the Apache Incubator Project is born: new projects include Apache Ant, Avalon, DB, Forrest, HC, POI, and TCL. Apache HTTP Server and Portable Runtime Project Management Committees are reestablished. New Board Committees on Infrastructure as well as Fundraising are formed. The ASF participates in the Java Community Process. The fifth ApacheCon takes place in Las Vegas. The first community-driven Apache Cocoon GetTogether is held.

Highlights: 2003
"Web 2.0" comes to the ASF; the Apache Web Services Project is formed. New projects in the Apache Incubator include Directory, Geronimo, Gump, James, Logging Services, Maven, Pluto, SpamAssassin, Tapestry, and XML Beans. Perl-Apache Project is renamed to the Apache Perl Project, and Cocoon becomes a Top Level Project. The sixth ApacheCon is held in Las Vegas, featuring an expo exchange with COMDEX. The Apache HTTP Server wins Best Server Software by Linux Format; Apache Ant wins Software Development Magazine Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Award, the Java Pro Readers' Choice Award for Most Valuable Java Deployment Technology, as well as the JavaWorld Editors' Choice Award for "Most Useful Java Community-Developed Technology". JavaWorld also awards Apache Xerces-J Editors' Choice for "Best Java XML Tool". SpamAssassin wins the OSDir Editor's Choice Award. The Apache License v.1.2 is released; all products of the Foundation are required to be released under the new license.

Highlights: 2004
ASF Board members are re-elected: Greg Stein as Chairman, Dirk-Willem van Gulik as President, Chuck Murko as Treasurer, and Jim Jagielski as Executive Vice President/Secretary. The stable Apache License v.2.0 is released, and the ASF Contributor License Agreement (CLA) is expanded to accommodate corporate donations. New Apache projects in the Incubator include Beehive, Excalibur, Forrest, Gump, Hivemind, iBatis, Lenya, myFaces, Portals, SpamAssassin, Struts, wsrp4J (Portals sub-project), Xalan, XMLBeans, and XML Graphics. The Apache Commons project is terminated, as well as the Project Management Committee for Avalon. A New Public Relations Committee is established, and The ASF issues a formal response regarding alleged JBoss IP infringement in Geronimo. The PHP project amicably separates from The ASF, granting all rights and responsibilities pertaining to its codebases to the PHP Group. ApacheCon returns to Las Vegas for its seventh conference. Apache Ant wins the Java Developer's Journal "Editors' Choice Award".

Highlights: 2005
The ASF continues to be the community of choice to spearhead new innovations through its Incubator. Numerous projects in development include activeMQ, Apollo, Bridges, Continuum, Derby, Directory, Felix, Harmony, Roller, stdcxx, Synapse, and Xerces; Apache Lucene graduates as a Top Level Project. ApacheCon returns to Europe with the eighth conference held in Stuttgart, Germany, followed by ApacheCon US in San Diego. Tomcat receives the SD Software Development Readers' Choice Awards for "Best Open Source Tool"; Software Development Magazine's JOLT! Awards recognize Apache Jakarta and Tomcat.

Highlights: 2006
A new Board of Directors is elected: Greg Stein and Jim Jagielski are re-elected as Chairman and Executive Vice President/Secretary respectively; Sander Striker joins the Board as President, and Justin Erenkrantz is elected Treasurer. The Incubator matures, with new projects created to meet growing industry interest in Open Source solutions for enterprise resource planning and manage related business processes. Projects undergoing incubation are Abdera, Archiva, Cayenne, CXF, Hadoop, Harmony, HiveMind, Jackrabbit, MINA, ODE, OfBIZ, Open JPA, Open EJB, Qpid, Santuario, Shale, Tapestry, Tiles, and Velocity; Apache Cayenne, OFBiz, and Tiles graduate to become Top Level Projects later that year. The Apache Security Team is re-established, a new Testing project is established to oversee the creation of software related to the domain of software testing; in addition, and the ASF launches new Innovation Laboratories for the experimentation of new ideas without Project bylaws or community building requirements. The ASF hosts its tenth ApacheCon in Dublin, Ireland, followed by ApacheCon US in Austin, and launches ApacheCon Asia in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The Foundation establishes the Sponsorship program to help offset day-to-day operating expenses; donations are accepted by both individual and corporate contributors. SpamAssassin wins the Linux New Media Award, and Tapestry was awarded Sun's annual Duke's Choice Award for outstanding Java product innovation.

Highlights: 2007
The breadth and capability of The ASF is reflected in the largest changeover its Board members since its incorporation: Jim Jagielski is elected Chairman, Justin Erenkrantz as President, J. Aaron Farr as Treasurer, and Sam Ruby as Executive Vice President/Secretary. New projects continue to germinate, including Buildr, Camel, C++ Standard Library, Pig, Quetzalcoatl, ServiceMix, Synapse, and Tiles entering the Incubator; Apache ActiveMQ, Commons (Jakarta), Felix, HttpComponents, ODE, OpenEJB, OpenJPA, POI, Quetzalcoatl, Roller, ServiceMix, Turbine, and Wicket graduate as Top Level Projects. The ASF establishes a Legal Affairs Committee to manage legal policies, as well as a Travel Assistance Committee to provide financial support to select individuals otherwise unable to attend ApacheCon. The twelfth ApacheCon is successfully held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, followed by ApacheCon US in Atlanta.

Highlights: 2008
The ASF re-elects Jim Jagielski, Justin Erenkrantz, and Sam Ruby to the Board as Chairman, President, and Secretary respectively; Sander Striker is elected Executive Vice President, and J. Aaron Farr is Treasurer. HBase, Hive, and Zookeeper enter the Incubator; Apache Abdera, Archiva, Buildr, Continuum, CouchDB, CXF, Hadoop, Qpid, and Tuscany become Top Level Projects. The Apache Attic is established to retire ASF projects that have reached their end of life through a scalable process. Apache user gatherings continue to gain popularity, with events hosted by projects that include Cocoon, Derby, Forrest, Hadoop, Jakarta, OfBIZ, Pig, Wicket, among others. The fourteenth ApacheCon is held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, followed by ApacheCon US in New Orleans, where sixty members of the community participate in voluntourism efforts to help rebuild the City still suffering from the effects of Hurricane Katrina. ApacheCon US also marks the expansion of ASF-wide developer and user community events to include "unconferences" such as BarCamps, GetTogethers, Symposia, and the first ASF Meet Up in Beijing. Apache tops the Software Development Times 100 list of Industry Influencers for the third year running in the category of Application Servers, The ASF wins its third Member of the Year prize awarded by the Java Community Process Program Management Office, Apache SpamAssassin won the InfoWorld "Best Of Open Source Software" BOSSIE Award, Apache Directory Studio finishes as runner-up for the Eclipse Community Award's Best Open Source RCP Application, and barely six months under incubation, Sling wins the JAX Innovation Award.

Highlights: 2009
The ASF announces Ten Years of Apache; celebrates a decade of innovation in Open Source software and community development. Nearly 300 ASF Members collaborate successfully with more than 2,000 Committers; 68 Top Level Projects, 35 initiatives in the Incubator, and 23 Labs concepts are currently active at the Foundation. ApacheCon Europe 2009 was held 23-27 March in Amsterdam, with the Hackathon (face-to-face Apache project-related collaboration/development with ASF Members and Committers) open to the public and including another BarCamp. 10th Anniversary celebrations continued at ApacheCon US 2009, in Oakland 2-6 November, where both the Governor of California and the Mayor of Oakland congratulated Apache on its success and named 4 November "Apache Software Foundation Day".

Highlights: 2010
The ASF hits its millionth code commit with a revision milestone today with a commit by ASF Member Yonik Seeley on behalf of the Apache Lucene Project. Apache Aries, Avro, Cassandra, Click, ESME, HBase, Hive, jUDDI, Karaf, Mahout, Nutch, OODT, Pig, Pivot, Shindig, Shiro, Subversion, Thrift, Tika, Traffic Server, UIMA, ZooKeeper become Top-level Projects. Alois, Amber, Bean Validation, Celix, Chukwa, Deltacloud, Gora, Isis, Jena, Kitty, Lucy, ManifoldCF, Mesos, NPanday, Nuvem, OODT, OpenNLP, SIS, Stanbol, Wave, Whirr, and Zeta Components entered the Apache Incubator. Milestone project releases include Cassandra 0.6, Cayenne 3.0, FOP 1.0, Maven 3.0, SpamAssassin 3.3.0, and Tomcat 7.0. Apache Excalibur, iBatis, Quetzalcoatl, and WSIF Projects were retired to the Attic. The ASF launches "Apache Extras" (hosted by Google) to provide a "home-away-from-home" for code associated with Apache projects. The ASF issued Public Statements about Apache Harmony as well as Oracle's decision on the Java SE Technology Compatibility Kit's Field Of Use, and resigns from the Java Community Process Executive Committee. Shane Curcuru, Doug Cutting, Bertrand Delacretaz, Roy T. Fielding, Jim Jagielski, Sam Ruby, Noirin Shirley, Greg Stein, and Henri Yandell have been elected to serve on the ASF Board of Directors; Geir Magnusson, Jr., is named as replacement for Henri Yandell. ASF Director Greg Stein awarded O'Reilly Open Source Award at OSCON. New role of Executive Assistant has been created and staffed. 30 new ASF Members were elected this year. ASF Platinum Sponsors are Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!; IBM joins Gold Sponsor Hewlett-Packard; Silver Sponsors are Cloudera, Progress Software and Springsource/VMWare, and Bronze Sponsors are BlueNog, Intuit, Joost, and Matt Mullenweg. ApacheCon North America took place in Atlanta, Georgia. BarCampApache in Sydney, Australia, was the first ASF-backed event to take place in the Southern Hemisphere.

Highlights: 2011
Apache ACE, Chemistry, Deltacloud, JMeter, Libcloud, River, Whirr became Top-level Projects. More projects than ever submitted to become part of the Apache community: Accumulo, Airavata, Ambari, Any23, AWF, Bigtop, Bloodhound, Cordova, DeltaSpike, DirectMemory, EasyAnt, Flex, Flume, Giraph, HCatalog, Kafka, Kalumet, Lucene.Net, MRUnit, ODF Toolkit, OGNL, Oozie,   OpenMeetings, OpenOffice, Rave, S4, and Sqoop entered the Incubator. Apache Alois retired from the Incubator. Apache Harmony, Jakarta, and Xindice moved to the Attic. Milestone project releases include Cassandra 0.7 and 1.0, Geronimo v3.0-beta-1, Pivot 2.0, Subversion 1.7.0, Tika 1.0, and Turbine 4.0-M1. Apache TomEE is certified as Java EE 6 Web Profile Compatible. Apache UIMA and Hadoop advance data intelligence and semantic capabilities of Watson, IBM's "Smartest Machine on Earth" demonstrated in first-ever man vs. machine competition on Jeopardy! quiz show. Apache Hadoop wins MediaGuardian’s "Innovator of the Year" award. The ASF accepted to become an Affiliate at the Open Source Initiative. New Executive Committee is appointed: Doug Cutting as Chair, Greg Stein as Vice Chair, Jim Jagielski as President, Noirin Plunkett as Executive Vice President, Sam Ruby as Vice President - Infrastructure, Craig L Russell as Secretary, Sam Ruby as Assistant Secretary, and Geir Magnusson, Jr., as Treasurer. The ASF is subpoenaed by the United Stated District Court to produce documents in Oracle America vs. Google related to the use of Apache Harmony code in the Android software platform, and the unsuccessful attempt by Apache to secure an acceptable license to the Java SE Technology Compatibility Kit. The ASF issues statement on Apache OpenOffice.org (the first mature, end-user-facing Apache project) and Open Letter to the Open Document Format Ecosystem clarifying that its code base was not pursued by the ASF prior to its acceptance into the Apache Incubator, and articulating the project’s vision within the wider Open Document Format ecosystem. 42 new ASF Members were elected, bringing the active membership to 370 individuals and 2,663 Apache Commiters world-wide. ASF Platinum Sponsors are Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!; AMD, Facebook, and Hortonworks join Gold Sponsors Hewlett-Packard and IBM; PSW Group joins Silver Sponsors Cloudera, Progress Software and Springsource/VMWare; and Liip AG, Lucid Imagination, Talend, and WANdisco join Bronze Sponsors BlueNog, Intuit, Joost, and Matt Mullenweg. ApacheCon North America took place in Vancouver, Canada, marking the 25th event in the conference series.

Highlights: 2012
The ASF celebrated the 17th Anniversary of the Apache HTTP Server with the release of v2.4; the project maintains its standing as the world's most popular Web server, powering nearly 400 million sites. The Apache Incubator continues to gain momentum, with 85 podlings graduating over the past decade. Apache Accumulo, Airavata, Any23, Bigtop, BVal, Cordova, Creadur, DirectMemory, Empire-db, Flex, Flume, Giraph, Gora, Hama, ISIS, Jena, Kafka, Lucene.Net, Lucy, ManifoldCF, MRUnit, Oozie, OpenNLP, OpenOffice, Rave, SIS, Sqoop, Stanbol, Steve, Syncope, VCL, Wink, Wookie become Top-level Projects. Allura, Blur, CloudStack, Crunch, cTAKES, DeviceMap, Drill, Hadoop Development Tools, Helix, Marmotta, Ripple, Streams, and Syncope entered the Incbuator. Apache AWF, HISE, Kato, Kitty, and PhotArk retired from the Incubator. Milestone project releases include Deltacloud 1.0, Hadoop 1.0, Nutch 2.0, TomEE 1.0, Traffic Server 3.2, and Wicket 6.0. New Executive Committee is appointed: Doug Cutting as Chair, Greg Stein as Vice Chair, Jim Jagielski as President, Ross Gardler as Executive Vice President, Craig L Russell as Secretary, Chris Mattmann as Treasurer, and Sam Ruby as Assistant Secretary. ASF Officers that now serve at the direction of the President are: Vice President, Brand Management; Vice President, Fundraising; Vice President, Marketing and Publicity; and Vice President, Conference Planning. The office of Vice President, Java Community Process is dissolved. 46 new ASF Members were elected this year. Citrix became an ASF Sponsor, joining Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! at the Platinum level; AMD, Hortonworks, HP, IBM, and Matt Mullenweg at the Gold level; GoDaddy, Huawei, and In Motion Hosting joined Basis Technology, Cloudera, PSW GROUP, SpringSource, and WANdisco at the Silver level; and Intuit and Twitter joined BlueNog, Digital Primates, Intuit, Joost, Liip AG SA Ltd, Lucid Imagination, Talend, and Two Sigma Investments at the Bronze level. The ASF returned to Europe with the ApacheCon Europe Community Edition in Sinsheim, Germany, underwritten and hosted by SAP.
Highlights: 2013
Apache Ambari, Bloodhound, Chukwa, Clerezza, CloudStack, Crunch, cTAKES, Curator, DeltaSpike, Etch, Helix, jclouds, JSPWiki, Marmotta, Mesos, Oltu, Onami, OpenMeetings, graduate as Top-level Projects. Aurora, BatchEE, Curator, Falcon, jclouds, Knox, log4cxx2, MetaModel, MRQL, Olingo, Open Climate Workbench, Phoenix, Provisionr, Samza, Sentry, Sirona, Spark, Storm, Stratos, Tajo, Tez, Twill, Usergrid entered the Apache Incubator. Apache Provisionr retired from the Incubator. Milestone project releases include Cassandra 1.2 and 2.0, OpenOffice 4.0, and Subversion 1.8.0. Apache Struts 1 announces End-Of-Life, and recommends Struts 2 as successor. Apache C++ Standard Library (STDCXX), ESME, and XMLBeans moved to the Attic. The ASF issues a statement on Oracle's Technology Compatibility Kit License. Shane Curcuru, Doug Cutting, Bertrand Delacretaz, Roy Fielding, Jim Jagielski, Chris Mattmann, Brett Porter, Sam Ruby, and Greg Stein were elected to the ASF Board of Directors. The office of Vice President, Conference Planning, was dissolved; committee was renamed to Events Planning. 36 new ASF Members were elected, bringing the active membership to 468 individuals. ASF Sponsors are Citrix, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! at the Platinum level; AMD, Hortonworks, HP, IBM, and Matt Mullenweg at the Gold level; Basis Technology, Cloudera, GoDaddy, Huawei, InMotion Hosting, PSW GROUP, SpringSource, and WANdisco at the Silver level; and BlueNog, Digital Primates, Intuit, Joost, Liip AG SA Ltd, Lucid Imagination, Talend, Twitter, and Two Sigma Investments at the Bronze level. Freie Universität Berlin (FUB) committed to become the provider of Apache server hosting and bandwidth in Europe. The ASF was accepted into the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) as a mentoring organization for the ninth consecutive year; hundreds of students have been mentored in "The Apache Way" under the guidance of the ASF Community Development Project, with many continuing to be long-term code committers on a variety of Apache projects, as well as some active program participants elected as ASF Members. ApacheCon North America took place in Portland, Oregon.

Highlights: 2014
The ASF exceeded 2 Million code commits: the two millionth revision was by ASF Member Daniel Kulp on behalf of the Apache CXF Project. The Apache HTTP Server remains the world's leading Web server: the Netcraft September Web Server Survey exceeded a billion Websites, stating "Apache truly dominates this market, with more than half of all active sites choosing to use Apache software". Interest in Apache's projects continued to boom, accelerating development and participation by 100% in four years: Apache Allura, Celix, Knox, Olingo, Open Climate Workbench, Phoenix, Spark, Storm, Stratos, Tajo, Tez, VXQuery became Top-level Projects. Argus, Brooklyn, Calcite, DataFu, Flink, HTrace, Ignite, Johnzon, Lens, Parquet, REEF, Slider, Tamaya, and Taverna entered the Apache Incubator. Milestone project releases included Cayenne 3.1, CloudStack 4.3, Log4j 2, SpamAssassin 3.4.0, and Spark 1.0. Apache Click was retired to the Attic. Apache OpenOffice reached a major adoption milestone with 100 million downloads. Apache TomEE won a Duke's Choice and Geek Choice Award; DeltaSpike, dubbed "the Swiss Army Knife of modern Java EE" won a Duke's Choice Award. The ASF Celebrated Document Freedom Day, with numerous Apache Projects supporting standards-based document accessibility and interoperability. Rich Bowen, Doug Cutting, Bertrand Delacretaz, Ross Gardler, Jim Jagielski, Chris Mattmann, Brett Porter, Sam Ruby, and Greg Stein were elected to the ASF Board of Directors. The ASF boasts 505 active Members and 4,081 Apache Committers. The ASF Infrastructure team continues to keep the ASF's multi-datacenter, multi-cloud deployment running 24x7x365 on multiple continents, distributing terabytes of artifacts per week and archiving more than 11 million Apache email messages. Apache's repositories changed greatly with the introduction of Git to the source code management system four years ago; since then the original Subversion repository had been decentralized and augmented with 268 Git repositories, and a robust GitHub presence with 564 different repositories. In addition, the Infrastructure team launched a new status service that provides extensive information about the health of the Apache infrastructure and activity within its projects, as well as a new code signing service for Java, Windows and Android applications for any Apache project to use to sign their releases. The ASF provided new "Powered by Apache" graphical assets for Apache projects, developers, and users to identify their affiliation with products and initiatives under the Apache umbrella. The ASF continues to flourish thanks to support from Platinum Sponsors Citrix, Facebook, Google, Matt Mullenweg, Microsoft, and Yahoo!; Gold Sponsors Cloudera, Comcast, HP, Hortonworks, and IBM; Silver Sponsors Budget Direct, Cerner, Huawei, InMotion Hosting, Pivotal, Produban, and WANdisco; and Bronze Sponsors Accor, Basis Technology, Bluehost, Cloudsoft Corporation, Samsung, Talend, and Twitter. The ASF decided to accept donations using Bitcoin, and received more than 90 transactions within 48 hours of opening its Bitcoin wallet. ApacheCon North America took place in Denver, Colorado, and ApacheCon Europe was held in Budapest, Hungary.

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