The Apache Software Foundation was officially created in July 1999. Its founders were a group calling themselves the "Apache Organization".

This "Apache organization" has existed for a long time before 1999. Development enthusiasts of this organization gathered together at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois in the United States.

Based on the developed NCSA HTTPd server, an HTTP server called Apache was developed and maintained.

The NCSA HTTPd server was originally developed by Rob McCool, but its original developers gradually lost interest in the software and moved elsewhere, leaving no one to provide more technical support for the server software.

Because the function of this server was so powerful, and the code could be freely downloaded, modified and released, some enthusiasts and users of this server software began to spontaneously communicate with each other and distribute their own modified versions of the software, and continuously improved its functions.

In order to better communicate, Brian Behlendorf established a mailing list himself, using it as a medium for this group (or community) to exchange technology and maintain software, and effectively organize the work of code rewriting and maintenance.

These developers gradually called their group the "Apache organization" and named this continuously revised and improved server software the Apache Server.

The name comes from a local Indian tribe in North America. This tribe is famous for its superb military literacy and superhuman endurance. In the second half of the 19th century, it resisted the invaders who invaded their territory.

In order to show respect for this Indian tribe, the name of the tribe (Apache) is used as the server name.

But when it comes to this naming, there is an interesting story circulating here.

Because this server is based on the NCSA HTTPd server and is the product of continuous revision and patching through the efforts of everyone, it is nicknamed "A Patchy Server" (a patch server).

Here, because "A Patchy" and "Apache" are homophones, it was finally officially named "Apache Server".

Later, due to the continuous expansion of business needs, more projects parallel to the Apache project were launched, centered on the Apache HTTP server, such as mod perl, PHP, Java Apache, etc.

As time goes by and the situation changes, the Apache Software Foundation's project list is constantly updated and changing - new projects are constantly being started, projects are suspended, and projects are split and merged.

For example, at the beginning, Jakarta was a Java Apache project launched to develop JAVA containers. Later, due to the suggestion of Sun Microsystems (SUN), the project name was changed to Jakarta.

But the managers of the project at the time did not expect that the Jakarta project would develop into a project that includes many open source software sub-projects based on the JAVA language due to the popularity of JAVA.

Later, individual projects had to be separated from Jakarta and became top-level projects of the Apache Software Foundation, and the Struts project was one of them.

Recently, in order to avoid disputes between SCO and the UNIX open source community, it has befallen the Apache Software Foundation (ASF).

The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has begun to take some measures to allow many projects to conduct more coordinated and structured management, and to protect its legitimate interests and avoid some potential legal attacks.