The Apache web server was first created by a group of sysadmins who were using the NCSA server and had created patches to enhance and improve it. Thus, "A Patchy" web server.

The Apache Software Foundation now encompasses a large variety of diverse projects in addition to Tcl: the web server, XML, Java, Perl, PHP, APR, Python, and is a non-profit corporation registered in the U.S., with members throughout the world.

The ASF consists of 60-some members, and hundreds of "committers" - those who have the rights to make changes to different projects' code.