Back in the mists of time – I’m talking about 2000 here – when free software was still viewed by many as a rather exotic idea, I published a book detailing its history up to that point. Naturally, I wrote about Apache (the Web server, not the foundation) there, since even in those early days it was already the sectoral leader. As I pointed out:
With the visible and measurable success of Apache, shown in the monthly Netcraft reports detailing how many public Web servers were using which program, people were increasingly aware not only that free software was widely used by companies, but that it was running the single most important new development in computing for decades: the World Wide Web.