Forest Hill, MD, Jan. 27, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of more than 350 Open Source projects and initiatives, today announced continued momentum in Open Source innovation and leadership.
"We continue to see strong adoption of Apache software across diverse sectors and categories," said ASF President Ross Gardler. "Whether users are seeking Open Source solutions or not, Apache ranks as a top choice. Our brand strength, proven leadership, and community-driven process enable individuals and market competitors alike to collaborate in a trusted environment. This, in turn, furthers our mission of developing top quality software that is bolstered by vibrant, active communities."
From Abdera to Zookeeper, the ASF is home to dozens of ubiquitous, best-in-class software projects such as Cordova, Flex, Lucene/Solr, Maven, OpenOffice, Tomcat, and the flagship Apache HTTP Server.
INNOVATION
Since its inception, the ASF has long been recognized as a leading source for Open Source network-server, network-client, and library tools that meet the demand for interoperable, adaptable, and sustainable solutions. Its reputation for producing reliable enterprise-grade software continues to grow dramatically across several categories, most notably Big Data, where Apache powerhouses such as Hadoop, Cassandra, Storm, and many others dominate the marketplace. According to Forrester Research, 100% of enterprises will embrace the Apache Hadoop ecosystem for data storage, processing, problem solving, and predictive analytics, particularly across Cloud environments.
Apache projects and categories that are experiencing widespread recognition include Ambari, Kafka, Mesos, and Spark --all winners of InfoWorld’s 2016 Technology of the Year award. In 2015, Apache products were featured more than 400 times in Gartner Magic Quadrant reports.
Projects and communities intending to become fully-fledged Apache projects do so through the Apache Incubator. This includes code donations from external organizations as well as established projects such as Groovy, which became an Apache Top-Level Project in November 2015,. There are 47 projects currently undergoing development in the Apache Incubator, 60% of which are in the Big Data category. In addition, there are 39 initiatives in the Apache Labs innovation "sandbox" for testing technical concepts.
EFFICIENCY
Beginning with an inaugural membership of 21 individuals who oversaw the progress of the Apache HTTP Server, the ASF has grown to 588 individual members and 5,317 Committers collaborating across six continents. All development is done on a volunteer basis --some committers may be paid by their employers for their time and code contributions, but the ASF does not pay for software or project oversight.
The private, 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization is funded through tax-deductible contributions from corporations, foundations, and private individuals. The ASF Sponsorship Program raises critical funds that helps offset day-to-day operating expenses such as bandwidth and connectivity, servers and hardware, legal and accounting services, brand management and public relations, general office expenditures, and support staff.
Approximately 75% of the ASF's US$1M annual budget is dedicated to running critical infrastructure support services. Each day, millions of people across the globe access the ASF’s two dozen servers and 75 distinct hosts. A distributed team (comprising 10 rotating volunteers and 5 paid staff) on three continents keep Apache services running running 24x7x365 at near 100% uptime on an annual budget of less than US$5,000 per project.
"The ASF founders were both pragmatic and provident in establishing an operation that is rigorously cost-efficient," added Gardler. "It’s amazing that we’ve been able to scale 35,000% over 16 years with very limited resources."
NEW LOOK
The ASF also unveiled a new visual identity today, the result of more than a year of planning alongside a design collaborative led by Lisa Dae and Fran Lukesh, whose services were donated by HotWax Systems and Lucidworks respectively.
OLD LOGO http://www.apache.org/images/asf_logo.gif
NEW LOGO https://www.apache.org/img/asf_logo.png
"We are proud to debut our new identity, which reflects the Foundation’s truly diverse nature," said Sally Khudairi, Vice President of Marketing and Publicity at the ASF. "The simplified logo and feather glyph pay homage to our legacy whilst reflecting our forward-focused energetic growth. We’re looking better than ever!"
The new identity will be unveiled in Brussels 30-31 January at the FOSDEM conference, with the brand roll out continuing across Apache projects and activities throughout the year.
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.
© The Apache Software Foundation. "Apache", "Apache Abdera", "Apache Cassandra", "Apache Cordova", "Apache Flex", "Apache Hadoop", "Apache Hive", "Apache HTTP Server", "Apache Lucene/Solr", "Apache Maven", "Apache OpenOffice", "Apache Spark", "Apache Storm", "Apache Tomcat", "Apache Zookeeper", "ApacheCon", and their logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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