April 1, 2016
The Apache Software Foundation welcomes Apache Apache.

The Apache Software Foundation is very proud to announce that all of the navigational, combat, and avionics software of the Apache AH64 Attack Helicopter is being open sourced by Boeing, Inc, and will be entering the Apache Incubator as Apache Apache.

A long-time believer in Open Source, Boeing feels that the added transparency given by being at the Apache Software Foundation will be a great boon to the AH64, with more eyes on the code resulting in increased security and reliability.

Boeing promises that this is but their first foray into releasing their source code, with more projects to come if this one turns out to be successful. They are also considering donating large amounts of code to the Jetspeed project. And, of course, Boeing is a major player in the cloud space already, with large numbers of its aircraft in the clouds any any given time.

The AH64 code base (henceforth ‘Apache Apache’) is large, encompassing everything from GPS navigational utilities, to air-to-ground missile tracking, to pilot life signs monitoring. It also includes a wide variety of experimental modules, including the controversial thought-control program formerly code-named ‘FireFox’, the inspiration for the movie of the same name. While this was never deployed in an actual aircraft, Boeing hopes that making the code public may result in some breakthroughs in that research.

Boeing and the ASF acknowledge that the number of people who will be able to actively work on, and test, this software, is exceedingly small, and are working on CI facilities where developers can gain access to AH64s and AH64 simulators on which they can test their code modifications. Details are being worked out, as the implications of a code crash are significant, and potentially expensive.

For more information on the Apache Apache project, visit http://apache.incubator.apache.org/ or http://apache.apache.org/  For more information on the AH64, see http://www.boeing.com/history/products/ah-64-apache.page  And see http://incubator.apache.org/ for information on the Apache Incubator.

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 550 individual Members and 5,300 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, Cerner, Cloudera, Comcast, Confluent, Facebook, Google, Hortonworks, HP, Huawei, IBM, InMotion Hosting, iSigma, LeaseWeb, Matt Mullenweg, Microsoft, PhoenixNAP, Pivotal, Private Internet Access, Produban, Red Hat, Serenata Flowers, WANdisco, and Yahoo. For more information, visit http://www.apache.org/ or follow @TheASF on Twitter.