"Most people in the free software world know two things about Apache. The first is that its name derives from the fact that it was a “a patchy server”, built out of patches to the earlier NCSA HTTPd Web server. The other is that in terms of market share, Apache knocks Microsoft's IIS into a cocked hat. Unfortunately, neither of these statements is true.
Here's what Brian Behlendorf, one of the founders of the Apache project, and the person who came up with the name, told me a few years ago:"