Apache powers 68% of active Web sites, up from 54% two years ago, according to Netcraft, a company that surveys software used on Web sites. Apache has consistently captured market share at the expense of two formidable commercial competitors, Microsoft with its Internet Information Server, and Sun Microsystems with its SunOne Web server.

The Apache Web server sprang out of a group of eight Webmasters communicating with one another about what they wish they had in an HTTP server at a time when the existing offerings fell short. As each Webmaster contributed thinking and code to the project, "there was a lot of belief in the importance of the separation of church and state," Behlendorf says. The resulting Web server was a collective effort, and contributors would have been offended if a few in the group had tried to produce a commercial product out of the open-source code, Behlendorf recalls of the 1995-96 period.

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