Apache celebrates quarter of growth

The Apache Software Foundation has declared the first quarter of 2012 a quarter of "unprecedented growth" – it now has 104 current top-level projects (TLP) and 51 projects in the incubator, the largest number for either count. Jim Jagielski, the ASF's president, said the "success can be attributed to Apache's longstanding commitment to providing exceptional Open Source products, each with a stable codebase and an active community".

There were 87 releases by top level projects, including major releases from Apache TomEE, Apache Cassandra, Apache Hadoop, and the project which began it all, Apache HTTP Server. The Foundation also noted that Apache HTTP Server has maintained its position as top web server, powering a record 425 million web sites according to Netcraft, and with over 500 community developed modules extending it.

The incubator saw 19 releases from the 51 projects, or podlings as the ASF calls them, the most notable of which was the first release of Apache OpenOffice 3.4 since its somewhat controversial journey from Oracle to the Foundation. New arrivals in the incubator included CloudStack, donated by Citrix. To graduate from the incubator, a project must adopt what the ASF calls "The Apache Way", the way of creating transparent meritocracy around a project management committee, which Apache has found to be most beneficial to forming healthy projects.

The Foundation also highlighted new sponsors such as Citrix, Huawei, GoDaddy and Twitter, and improved community outreach working with the Google Summer of Code. "The Apache community at-large is driving this momentum by providing code, documentation, bug reports, design feedback, testing, evangelizing, mentoring, and more" said Jagielski, "The ASF makes it easy for all contributors, regardless of any affiliations, to collaborate".

(djwm)