THE APACHE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION

The ASF's goal is to provide software for the public good at no charge. We do this by providing services and support for many like-minded software project communities of individuals who choose to join the ASF.

The ASF ensures that the Apache projects continue to exist beyond the participation of individual volunteers. Individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to collaborative open-source software development, through sustained participation and contributions within the Foundation's projects, are eligible for membership in the ASF. An individual is awarded membership after nomination and approval by a majority of the existing ASF members. Thus, the ASF is governed by the community it most directly serves -- the people collaborating within its projects.

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) is a 501(c)3 non-profit public charity organization incorporated in the United States of America and was formed in 1999 primarily to:\r\n\r\n provide a foundation for open, collaborative software development projects by supplying hardware, communication, and business infrastructure\r\n\r\n create an independent legal entity to which companies and individuals can donate resources and be assured that those resources will be used for the public benefit\r\n\r\n provide a means for individual volunteers to be sheltered from legal suits directed at the Foundation's projects\r\n\r\n protect the 'Apache' brand, as applied to its software products, from being abused by other organizations\r\n\r\nWhile there is not an official list, these six principles have been cited as the core beliefs of philosophy behind the foundation, which is normally referred to as "The Apache Way":\r\n\r\n collaborative software development\r\n\r\n commercial-friendly standard license\r\n\r\n consistently high quality software\r\n\r\n respectful, honest, technical-based interaction\r\n\r\n faithful implementation of standards\r\n\r\n security as a mandatory feature\r\n\r\nAll of the ASF projects share these principles. Similarly, Apache projects are required to govern themselves independently of undue commercial influence.

THE APACHE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION (ASF)\r\nOpen. Innovation. Community.\r\nAre you powered by Apache? The answer is most likely “yes".\r\nApache projects serve as the backbone for some of the world's most visible and widely used applications in Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning, Big Data, Build Management, Cloud Computing, Content Management, DevOps, IoT and Edge Computing, Mobile, Servers, and Web Frameworks, among other categories.\r\nDependency on Apache projects for critical applications cannot go underestimated, from the 2.6 terabyte, Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers investigation to system-\r\nwide information management at the US Federal Aviation Administration to capturing 500B events each day at Netflix to enabling real-time financial services at Lloyds Banking Group to simplifying mobile application development across Android/Blackberry/iOS/Ubuntu/Windows/Windows Phone/OS X \r\nplatforms to processing requests at Facebook's 300-petabyte data warehouse to powering clouds for Apple, Disney, Huawei, Tata, and countless others.\r\nEvery day, more programmers, solutions architects, individual users, educators, researchers, corporations, government agencies, and enthusiasts around the world are choosing Apache software for development tools, libraries, frameworks, visualizers, end-user productivity solutions, and more.\r\n\r\nSee https://s3.amazonaws.com/files-dist/AnnualReports/FY2017-ASF-AnnualReport-FINAL.pdf for much more!