The Apache Software Foundation
American nonprofit open-source software community
The Apache Software Foundation ( ə-PATCH-ee; ASF) is an American nonprofit corporation (classified as a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States) that supports a number of open-source software projects. The ASF was formed from a group of developers of the Apache HTTP Server, and incorporated on March 25, 1999. As of 2021, it includes approximately 1000 members.
The Apache Software Foundation is a decentralized open source community of developers. The software they produce is distributed under the terms of the Apache License, a permissive open-source license for free and open-source software (FOSS). The Apache projects are characterized by a collaborative, consensus-based development process and an open and pragmatic software license, which is to say that it allows developers, who receive the software freely, to redistribute it under non-free terms. Each project is managed by a self-selected team of technical experts who are active contributors to the project. The ASF is a meritocracy, with membership granted only to volunteers who have actively contributed to Apache projects.
Among the ASF's objectives are: to provide legal protection to volunteers working on Apache projects, and to prevent the "Apache" brand name from being used by other organizations without permission.
The ASF holds several Community Over Code conferences each year, highlighting Apache projects and related technology.
The public source identifies “The Apache Software Foundation” as american nonprofit open-source software community. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Apache, Software and Foundation.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q489709. VIAF identifies the subject as 187308307. The Library of Congress control number is no2011157268. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1999, 2021 and 1000.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Apache Software Foundation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.