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dowco.com News - Technical - The Apache Web Server
By Mike Leeson

When you visit websites, chances are the software that runs that site is an Apache Web Server.  Apache has been the most popular HTTP server on the World Wide Web and as of March 2007 it served a little over 58% of all websites (compared with Microsoft's IIS server that has a share of about 31%).

Apache is primarily used to serve both static content and dynamic Web pages on the World Wide Web. And many web applications are designed expecting the environment and features that Apache provides.  It is also the web server component of the popular LAMP web server application stack, alongside Linux, MySQL, and the PHP/Perl/Python programming languages.

Why the name "Apache"?

According to the FAQ on the project's website, the name 'Apache' was chosen from respect for the Native American Indian tribe of Apache (Indé), well-known for their superior skills in warfare strategy and their inexhaustible endurance.

Secondarily, and more popularly (though incorrectly) accepted, it's considered a cute name which stuck. Apache is "A PAtCHy server". It was based on some existing code and a series of "patch files".

A Little History

A public domain HTTP server, known as NCSA HTTPd, was developed by Rob McCool at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.  When the development of the HTTPd stalled after Rob left NCSA in mid-1994, many programmers and webmasters contributed and developed their own extensions and bug fixes to further improve the program.  The changes are in the form of "patches", lines of codes that get integrated to the main source program.

Using NCSA HTTPd as a base, the developers included the bug fixes and other enhancements and made the first official public release (0.6.2) of the Apache server in April 1995.  It has gone through a lot of changes and redesign over the years to support the rapidly growing Apache user community.  In 1999, the Apache Software Foundation was formed to provide organizational, legal, and financial support for the Apache HTTP Server.

Version 2.x of the Apache server was a substantial re-write of much of the Apache 1.x code, with a strong focus on further modularization, the development of a portability layer, IPV6 support, Unix threading and better support for non-Unix platforms (eg, Microsoft Windows).

Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) is the main competitor to Apache, trailed by Sun Microsystems' Sun Java System Web Server and a host of other applications such as Zeus Web Server.

Apache is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the Apache Software Foundation.  Released under the Apache License, the Apache HTTP Server is free/open source software.