Stefano Mazzocchi of the Apache Software Foundation was the original developer of JMeter.
He wrote it primarily to test the performance of Apache JServ (a project that has
since been replaced by the Apache Tomcat project). We redesigned JMeter to enhance the GUI
and to add functional-testing capabilities.
JMeter became a Top Level Apache project in November 2011, which means it has a Project Management Committee and a dedicated website.