Trust & Security
Our commitment to transparency, ethical use, open-source integrity, and user safety. Understand how XAMPP is built, licensed, and intended to be used.
Legal Usage Policy
XAMPP is free software distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2). This license grants you the freedom to run, study, share, and modify the software for any lawful purpose. You may use XAMPP for personal projects, educational purposes, commercial development, and internal business applications without restriction.
When you distribute XAMPP or derivative works, the GPLv2 requires that you also provide access to the corresponding source code and that any distributed modifications remain under the same license. This ensures that XAMPP and its derivatives remain free and open for everyone.
XAMPP is a trademark of Apache Friends. While the software itself is freely usable, the XAMPP name and logo are protected trademarks. You may not use the XAMPP trademark in a way that suggests endorsement or affiliation without permission.
Ethical Usage Statement
XAMPP is designed and intended for legitimate on-premise web development, testing, education, and system administration. We strongly condemn any use of XAMPP or its components for malicious purposes, including but not limited to:
- Hosting phishing sites or deceptive web pages designed to steal credentials
- Distributing malware, ransomware, or any harmful software
- Unauthorized access to networks, systems, or data belonging to others
- Any activity that violates applicable laws or regulations
By downloading and using XAMPP, you agree to use it responsibly and in compliance with all applicable laws. The XAMPP community is built on trust, collaboration, and the shared goal of making web development accessible to everyone.
Open-Source Transparency
Public Source Code
XAMPP is assembled from well-known, widely trusted open-source projects. The source code for every component - Apache HTTP Server, MariaDB, PHP, Perl, phpMyAdmin, FileZilla, and OpenSSL - is publicly available and has been audited by millions of developers and security researchers over decades. There is no hidden or obfuscated code in XAMPP.
Build Process Integrity
XAMPP installers are built using automated, reproducible processes. Windows installers are digitally signed with Authenticode certificates. macOS packages are notarized by Apple. Linux packages are distributed with GPG signatures. These measures ensure that the software you download is exactly what was published and has not been tampered with in transit.
Community Oversight
Because XAMPP is open source, anyone can inspect the code, report issues, propose improvements, and verify security claims. The project has been active for over 20 years with a global community of users, developers, and educators contributing to its ongoing improvement and security.
No Malware Guarantee
XAMPP contains no malware, adware, spyware, trojans, or any form of malicious software. This is not merely a claim - it is verifiable fact. Because XAMPP is built entirely from open-source components, the complete source code is available for independent audit.
Antivirus false positives can occur because XAMPP includes server software and system-level tools. If your security software flags XAMPP, we encourage you to verify the SHA-256 checksum of your download against the official values and report the false positive to your antivirus vendor so they can correct their signatures.
User Responsibility Disclaimer
XAMPP is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the software is with you.
XAMPP is designed for self-hosted dev environments. Default security settings are intentionally permissive to facilitate easy setup and testing. If you choose to expose XAMPP services to a network or the public internet, you accept full responsibility for configuring appropriate security measures, including but not limited to firewalls, authentication, access controls, and encryption.
Apache Friends, xampp.dev, and contributors to the XAMPP project are not liable for any damages arising from the use or inability to use XAMPP, including data loss, service interruption, or security breaches resulting from misconfiguration or misuse.
License Information
XAMPP and its components are licensed under free and open-source licenses.
XAMPP Distribution
GNU General Public License v2 (GPLv2)
Apache HTTP Server
Apache License 2.0
MariaDB
GNU General Public License v2
PHP
PHP License v3.01
phpMyAdmin
GNU General Public License v2
FileZilla Server
GNU General Public License v2