Apache Overview HOWTO

1. Introduction

This document gives you an overview of the Apache world, including Apache Software Foundation projects such as the Apache web server and commercial and open source third party software. Apache is the most popular server on the Internet. New Apache users, especially those coming from a Windows background, are often unaware of the possibilities of Apache, its useful addons and, more in general, how everything works together. This document aims to show a general picture of such possibilities with a brief description of each one and pointers for further information. The information has been gathered from many sources, including projects' web pages, conference talks, mailing lists, Apache websites and my own hands-on experience. Full credit is given to these authors. Without them and their work, this document would not have been possible or necessary.

Copyright 2002 Daniel Lopez Ridruejo

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the Open Content Open Publication License, Version 1.1. A copy of the license is included in the appendix entitled "Open Content Open Publication License", or at www.opencontent.org/openpub/.

1.1 Apache Software Foundation

The Apache Software Foundation provides support for the Apache community of open-source software projects. The Apache projects are characterized by a collaborative, consensus based development process, an open and pragmatic software license, and a desire to create high quality software that leads the way in its field. We consider ourselves not simply a group of projects sharing a server, but rather a community of developers and users.

The ASF is home to many successful Open Source projects, such as the Tomcat Servlet/JSP engine and the ANT build tool.

You can learn more about the foundation here.

1.2 Structure of this document

The first part of this document deals with the Apache Web Server and related modules. It covers the history, architecture and capabilities of the server and describes ways in which you can extend and customize it.

The second part of this document covers projects of the Apache Software Foundation, such as those form the Jakarta and Java XML communities. Rather than organizing the projects around a certain programming language or technology, they are organized based on functionality provided.