OK, attached is a *VERY* preliminary history of the Apache server. One thing that struck me while working on this is how very hard it is to get historical information about this sort of thing. We are so obsessed about the latest and greatest of everything that we have very little concern for the past. In particular, I had trouble finding out anything about the timeline of the NSCA HTTPd server. I found a detailed change log, but it had no dates in it.
Oh, well, perhaps someone can point me in the right direction on that. Anyways, here it is. -- Rich Bowen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Come see me at Apachecon! -- http://www.apachecon.com/Title: The History of the Apache Server project
The History of the Apache Server project
This document traces the history of the Apache Server project, and other events that influenced the project in important ways.
Pre-history
May 4, 1536. In a letter Florentine merchant Francesco Lapi uses the @ sign for the first time in recorded history.
1752. Benjamin Franklin gets a shock while flying his kite.
March 10, 1876. Alexander Graham Bell transmits the first spoken message by telephone.
1945. ``As we may think'' published by Vannevar Bush.
1947 John Bardeen, William Shockley, and Walter Brattain invent the transistor.
1965. Ted Nelson used the word ``hypertext.''
Thomas Marill and Lawrence Roberts set up the first Wide Area Network, at MIT.
1966. Funding is approved for what will become ARPANET
April 7, 1969. RFC1 created, discussing the interface between machines connected to ARPANET.
September 2nd and October 1st, 1969. The first and second nodes are installed on ARPANET, at UCLA and Stanford, respectively. Connections are made at 50Kpbs.
May, 1974 Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn publish 'A Protocol for Packet Network Internetworking', which first introduces Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). This is the first recorded use of the term ``Internet.''
1976. UUCP developed by AT&T.
1984. William Gibson's novel ``Neuromancer'' uses the term ``Cyperspace'' for the first time.
March 1989. Tim Berners Lee proposes a ``web'' of hypertext documents for keeping track of large projects at CERN.
November 1990. Tim Berners Lee creates the first World-Wide Web software. This is a GUI web browser and WYSIWYG HTML editor. The package is named ``WorldWideWeb.''
October 5, 1991. Linus Torvalds announces Linux version 0.02
NCSA
November 1992. NSCA HTTPd is listed on Tim Berners-Lee's list of available W3 servers, along with 30 others. Note, this is the complete list of web sites, not just web server products.
January 1993. NCSA releases Mosaic for X
May 1993. Network Solutions awarded the InterNIC contract
September 1993. Mosaic released for Macintosh and Windows.
March 1994. Marc Andreesen and Jim Clark form Mosaic Communications Corp, which will later become Netscape Communications.
In the beginning
March 1995. Rob McCool leaves NCSA, and the Apache project starts.
The 8 original core members of the Apache Group were Brian Behlendorf, Roy T. Fielding, Rob Hartill, David Robinson, Cliff Skolnick, Randy Terbush, Robert S. Thau, and Andrew Wilson.
April, 1995. 0.6.2 release. Based on the NCSA codebase. Given the name Apache, since it was ``a patchy'' server, built from patches on the NSCA code.
August, 1995. 0.8.8 release. Moved to new codebase, redesigned by Robert Thau.
1.0
January, 1996. Apache 1.0 release. Included API for server extensions, more
general VirtualHost support, content negotiation, XBitHack, and the ability
to pipe your logs to a program rather than just to a file. Experimental
modules were included that allowed for configurable logging, and for loading
modules at server run time.
January 19, 1996. Roy Fielding et al release draft 1 of the HTTP 1.0 specification.
1.1
February 1996. Apache 1.1beta. Included a lot of neat new stuff: Caching proxy, filetype-based script ``action'', keep-alive persistent connections, customizable CGI environment variables, UserDir, ability to turn off DNS lookups, the ability to listen on multiple addresses and ports, and nifty new icons are some of the things that were part of this release. Optional new modules include mod_auth_db and mod_auth_mysql, which provide for authentication against Berkeley DB databases, and MySQL databases, respectively.
March 1996. Apache 1.1 official release. A logrotate script is added to the distribution, in addition to all the new features that were added in the beta.
1.2
April 1997. Apache 1.2 release. Includes even more nifty new stuff: HTTP 1.1
compliance, variables and conditionals in SSI directives, file-based and
regex-enabled directive selection with the Files directive, setting
enviromnent variables based on the user agent (browser), SetUID CGI execution,
URL rewriting module, configurable logging module became standard, multiple IP
addresses in VirtualHost directives, debugging and resource limits for CGI,
gracefull restarts, simplified compilation, more flexibility with the
Options directive, -h command line option to display help, ability to set
or remove HTTP headers, conditional configuration options with the IfModule
directive, improved syntax for auth directives. Optional new modules include a
new proxy module, and an example module to demonstrate the API.
1.3
July 1997. Apache 1.3a1 released, with a lot of new functionality. Perhaps the
biggest thing in this release is the new experimental support for Microsoft
Windows NT. Other new things in this release are: Regular _expression_ matching
for Alias and Redirect directives, mod_mime_magic added to figure out file
types when the file extension is uninformative or missing, mod_dir split into
mod_dir and mod_autoindex, ability to specify more than one filename
for the AccessFileName directive, HostNameLookup now defaults to 'off',
and a new child_init function added to API to allow a new child to set up
things when it is spawned.
April 1998. Apache 1.3.0 official release. In addition to the new features
announced with the initial alpha release, this release also included important
new things such as the APACI configuration tool, a small license change,
improved DSO support, and a new dbmmanage script.
October 1998. Apache 1.3.3 release has one unified server configuration file, rather than the traditional three files.
October 1998. The first ApacheCon conference held in San Francisco. Some of the Apache developers met in person for the first time.
2.0
March 2000. Apache 2.0a1 was released in the closing session of ApacheCon 2000, held in Orlando
October 2000. ApacheCon 2000 Europe held in London, England.
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