OW2 FAQ

Below, you will find a set of questions and answers about OW2. If you have a question and don't find it here, please suggest a question or help refine the answers by contacting the OW2 Management Office.

OW2 newcomers FAQ

OW2 community FAQ

OW2 members FAQ

OW2 codebase FAQ

OW2 project managers FAQ

Answers

OW2 Newcomers

What is OW2?

OW2 is an open source community committed to making available to everyone the best and most reliable middleware and software infrastructure technology, including generic enterprise applications and cloud computing technologies. The mission of the OW2 Consortium is to i) develop open source code for middleware, generic enterprise applications, and cloud computing and ii) to foster a vibrant community and business ecosystem.
History: OW2 was launched on January 1, 2007 as OW2 Consortium through the merger of ObjectWeb and OrientWare, two leading open source middleware consortim consisting of renowned industry IT corporations, innovative start-ups, prominent academic organizations, and individuals from across the world. Orientware was an open organization supported by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST). In 2007, a new consortium agreement was necessary because the one governing ObjectWeb ended on December 31, 2006. This was the occasion to address some limitations of the previous agreement. For instance, ObjectWeb was not an independent organization, rather it was like a research project launched by its original cofounders, Bull, France Telecom and INRIA, and hosted at INRIA. In this configuration, ObjectWeb lacked resources and was not scalable. The OW2 Consortium overcame these limitations.
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Is OW2 about technology or marketing?

OW2 is a platform where software developers cooperate to jointly develop and promote industry-grade open source software for corporate information systems. OW2 is not in the business of marketing software and does not intend to become a new software vendor. OW2 members however may market open source software products on a commercial basis. OW2 helps its members develop their business ecosystems. OW2 considers that open source software is part of the software industry.
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When was OW2 launched?

OW2 was launched on January 1, 2007. This date was chosen because the consortium agreement which defined ObjectWeb as it was known ended on December 31, 2006. OW2 is celebrating its fifteen-year anniversary in 2022.
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How can I participate in OW2?

There are many ways to participate in OW2:
- Join OW2 (Online Registration)
- Participate in an Initiative (Initiatives)
- Submit a Project to the OW2 code base (Submit a Project)
- Check out the legal documents and submit changes (Legal Resources)
- Help promote OW2 (Twitter, LinkedIn)
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Who can join OW2?

Membership in OW2 is open to all types of organizations including commercial, educational, and governmental organizations, as well as individuals. Any entity which can sign the Membership Agreement can become a Member.
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Can I join OW2 as an individual?

Yes. OW2 has defined a membership category specifically for individuals. Note that, for individual members, it is enough to simply register online; it is no longer necessary to return a signed membership agreement and there are no fees.
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Do all members pay the same fee?

No. For Corporate Membership, companies are segmented into different categories: Micro, Small, Medium and Large organizations as defined by the European Commission. Fees are described in the Membership Categories page.
Membership is free of charge for Individuals, and a special rate applies for the categories "Academia" and "Laboratory".
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What is a Strategic Member?

Strategic Members are organizations which stand out to provide significant resources to support the Consortium's objectives and wish to play an active role both in setting the direction of the Consortium code development activities and facilitating the use and acceptance of the Consortium's technology. Strategic Members commit their dues for a minimum of three consecutive years, as well as contributing in other ways such as dedicating full time staff to help run the organization.
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What is an Initiative?

An Initiative is a joint effort by OW2 members aimed at facilitating technology integration between projects and mainstream use. Within an Initiative, OW2 Members work together to develop both technical integration between projects and business synergies in order to address specific market needs. An Initiative is generally launched and driven by Strategic Members. Corporate Members are welcome to participate in an Initiative Management Team and can be invited to co-lead an Initiative. OW2 initiatives are listed on the "Initiatives Overview" page.
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How do you manage projects licenses?

    A "license" means here a given version of a given license.
    1) License choice
    Any OSS license recognised and endorsed by the Open Source Initiative may be accepted, as defined by our Intellectual Property Rights Policy (paragraph 1.7). The Board makes the final decision. When accepted, the license should be immediately published on the project's web pages.
    2) License change
    While projects are free to choose their own licenses, any license change requires a Board decision. When accepted, the license change should be immediately published on the project's web pages.
    3) Board decision guidelines
- Should not arbitrarily ban any OSS business model.
- Should not affect negatively any member's business model (eg. dual-licensing, subscription...).
- Should foster reusability of OW2 components (beware of usage restrictions).
- Should not impede cross-project collaborations.
- Should exercise regulation (eg. prevent appropriation of OSS components, reject a project that is not perceived as truly OSS, act as a "referee" to solve conflicts...).
- Should not allow a license change toward more restrictive usage terms, unless OW2 has strong strategic reasons to do so.
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Does OW2 accept the dual licensing business model?

Yes. OW2 recognizes that its members may choose to engage in dual licensing business practices. Each Member remains free to license, outside of the Project hosted by the Consortium, their own software contribution under any other license. The rule is that commercial companies engaged in dual licensing business model must allow third-party committers on the code.
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Are membership categories different in OW2?

OW2 has three main categories of membership: Strategic Members, Corporate Members and Individual Members.
The dues, rights, and duties of all categories are defined in the OW2 bylaws, and are also described on the membership categories page.
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OW2 Community

How can I stay up-to-date with OW2?

OW2 publishes a monthly newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter, as well as view previous newsletters published in the newsletter archives, in the News, OW2 Newsletter section.
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Does OW2 organize events?

OW2 organizes participation in events such as trade-shows and conferences. During such events, OW2 may book a set of pods to create an OW2 village or call for presentations in the name of OW2, in order to create an OW2 track in the conference.
Moreover, OW2 organizes its own annual conference, the OW2Con.
There are also a number of events directly related to the life of OW2, including Board meetings, the annual General Assembly, or Technology Council meetings.
Event listings appear in the News, Events webpage.
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Where can I find OW2 on social networks?

OW2 is present on LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. We also have IRC channels.
The Community, Social Networks web page contains more detailed information about these groups.
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How can I leave the community and delete my account?

If you want to leave the OW2 community, please send an e-mail to the OW2 management office. The management office will then confirm your decision by answering to your email. Upon your confirmation, your account will be deleted and you will be unsubscribed from the OW2 newsletter (unless you wish to remain subscribed).
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OW2 Members

What is the OW2 Board and how can I participate?

The OW2 Board of Directors defines the consortium strategy.
According to the OW2 bylaws (which can be found on the Legal Resources page), the Board is composed of:
- one representative from each strategic member
- as many representatives from corporate members
- one representative for individual members.
The strategic members each appoint one representative, and the representatives from the corporate and individual members are elected yearly.
Participation to the Board can be:
- direct, by becoming a candidate in the election and possibly being elected as a member
- indirect, by participating in the election as a voter
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How can I participate to events organised by OW2?

The OW2 Management Office advertises events to its members on a regular basis.
This includes calls to participate in trade-shows and calls for speakers at conferences.
If you have missed such calls, you can also directly contact the OW2 Management Office to find information on participating in OW2 related events.
Note that all events are published in the News, Events webpage.
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How can I participate in OW2 Initiatives?

If you would like to join an OW2 Initiative, you should contact the Initiative directly. Each Initiative hosts its own webpage (see Initiatives).
Moreover, if you would like to propose the creation of an Initiative, you can do so. Bear in mind that an Initiative must be lead by an OW2 Strategic member (which should not prevent you from proposing one). Please read the Initiative Handbook and then fill in the Initiative Charter template, which can be found in the Initiatives webpage.
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As an OW2 member, what marketing support does OW2 offer?

OW2 offers a number of services for marketing support:
- Invitation to present your project at industry events
- Support for press releases
- Support for realizing case studies
- OW2 logos to be placed on corporate or project websites
- OW2 presentations to be re-used to present OW2
- Support for designing project flyers
- Your project news in the OW2 newsletter
- Market Readiness Level evaluation of your project.
Various other forms of support, contact the Management Office with your request.
Templates and guidelines for marketing documents are in the News, Marketing Resources page of the OW2 website.
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Can OW2 help me publish a press release?

Yes.
Cases in which OW2 is willing to develop a joint press release with a member include, but are not limited to:
- Company joining OW2 as a Strategic Member
- Company joining OW2 as a Corporate Member
- New OW2 Project (after being accepted by the Technology Council)
- Company releasing a commercial offer based on or integrating OW2 technology
- Company implementing or deploying OW2 technology (ideally, press releases should be supported by a use case published on the OW2 site)
You should follow the guidelines described in the Press release guidelines webpage.
We have also defined a template for press releases which can be found in the News, Marketing Resources webpage.
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How can I share case studies and success stories about OW2?

We have defined a template for case studies.
If you have a success story about OW2 projects, the OW2 Management Office can help you produce a success story document.
All success stories are then made available on the News, Success Stories web page.
The template can be found in the News, Marketing Resources webpage.
Please ask management-office at ow2 dot org for support.
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When a new project enter the code base, should the supporting company become a member of OW2?

In case the project is commercially backed by a company, the company is expected to become an OW2 Corporate Member. In any case, the minimum membership requirement for a project to be accepted in incubation is the fully executed Individual Membership of the project leader.
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Where can I publish news about my project or company?

OW2 members can promote their news and events through the monthly OW2 newsletter. Please contact us at least two weeks before the date of sending.
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OW2 Codebase Contributors

How can I contribute to OW2 projects?

If you would like to contribute to an OW2 project, you should first:
- Get information about the project by visiting its website. Project websites often contain a roadmap.
- Visit the issue tracker for the project, which can give you ideas for features to be implemented or issues to be solved.
- Get in touch with the project community using the project mailing lists.
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Where do I find the mailing lists for a given project?

Project mailing lists can be found:
- on the project dashboard (project dashboards are accessible using the links on the main OW2 webpage, or in the Activities, Project pages)
- in the OW2 mailing list infrastructure page, http://mail.ow2.org/wws for those projects who use it.
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How can I become an editor of a project website?

If the project uses static pages where the web pages are maintained using version control, you should become a project developer, and obtain authorization from the project leaders to write in the repository.
If the project uses xWiki, you should:
- make sure you have a login on the OW2 xWiki system (the login is the identifier you give when registering as an OW2 member on the OW2 website)
- ask the project leaders to give you the appropriate rights
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Where do I find the information for using the OW2 services (Gitlab, Sympa, xWiki, Nexus, Atlassian tools, SVN, GIT, …)?

All technical information for using these tools (which identifier, connection parameters, …) can be found in the About, IT Infrastructure, then Tools offered to OW2 projects page.
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OW2 Project Managers

What can I do to increase the chances of success for my project?

We have compiled a set of guidelines to help project leaders ensure that their project will be successful.
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What are the services offered by OW2 to host my project?

If you are an OW2 project, you can benefit from a number of technical services to support the development of your project.
These include Gitlan repository manager, a version control system, mailing lists, website support, trackers, and more.
The list of supported tools can be found on the About, IT Infrastructure, and then overview page.
For more information about these tools, contact the Management Office.
You can also suggest support for other tools by contacting the OW2 Technology Council.
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How do I administer the rights for committers and developers on the Forge?

When logged into the OW2 Forge, you can administer the rights of developers.
In the admin tab of your project, you can:
- add users to the project
- by following the Users permissions link, you can fine tune the rights for each user
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Can I use Atlassian tools?

Yes.
OW2 benefits from a community license installation of Atlassian tools.
This includes Jira, Fisheye and Bamboo.
Information for configuring the tools for your project can be found in the About, IT Infrastructure overview page.
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Which version control system can I use? Do you support SVN? Do you support GIT?

The OW2 Forge supports SVN.
CVS was disabled some time ago.
OW2 also offers GIT, with its own instance of Gitorious at http://gitorious.ow2.org.
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What bug and feature trackers are available?

The OW2 Infrastructure contains its own tracker and other tools.
Visit the IT infrastructure page for more information.
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How can I publish news about my project?

All project news are compiled monthly and appear in the OW2 newsletter.
To publish a news:
- go to the project page on https://projects.ow2.org/view/wiki/
- click on the News tab for the project
- enter the news following the indicated format.
The news will appear both on the project page and in the newsletter.
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What is a project dashboard? What can I do with it?

Each OW2 project has a dashboard.
The role of the dashboard is to provide an identity card for each OW2 project, with a uniform look-and-feel for all projects.
We have introduced the dashboard following the heterogeneity of OW2 project websites.
The dashboards for mature and incubator OW2 projects have a link from the OW2 main webpage, and from the OW2 project pages (by maturity and by category) for all projects.
To edit the dashboard of your project, simply got to it, log into the OW2 xWiki, and select Edit->Inline Form.
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What is OSCAR? How does it affect my project? What do I have to do?

OSCAR – Open-source Software Capability Assessment Radar – is the platform supporting and enabling OW2's quality and market readiness program. It started as SQuAT – Software Quality Assurance and Trustworthiness. OSCAR’s structure is aligned with what we call the OW2 Process comprised of four sections, Technology, Governance, Quality and Delivery.
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What is the Sonar part of the OSCAR programme?

(work in progress)
Mature project are requested to publish results of running Sonar on their code.
We have instanciated a Sonar server on the OW2 infrastructure. Currently, the OW2 Management Office operates this server.
On this server, we have installed an OW2 profile.
Projects can also use their own profile. In this case, they need to contact the OW2 Servicedesk to install their profile.
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Regarding the SONAR rules, how can I use PMD, Checkstyle and Findbugs rules with my IDE?

You can install Eclipse plugins. A simple guide can be found here.
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I would like to create an appliance for my project. How can I do it?

OW2 has negotiated a community licence with UShareSoft who offers OW2 projects leaders the ability to make their software available in a package that can be easily installed in customer environments.
OW2 project leaders should check this page.
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I would like to submit a new project to OW2. What is the procedure?

You can directly submit a project from the OW2 project submission page.
Note that you should be at least registered as an OW2 individual member.
Moreover, OW2 project are subject to the governance of the Technology Council (see next question).
In particular, it is expected that you pay particular attention to the questions asked on the project submission form, and provide as detailed information as possible in order to help the Technology Council make its decision.
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What are the rules for becoming an OW2 project? What is the selection process?

The Technology Council is in charge of evaluating project submissions. The process relies on a on a set of rules which are described on the TC wiki. Thus, it should take about 2 weeks of discussion followed by a formal vote.
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What does it mean for a project to be in the Incubator, Mature or Archive stage?

OW2 projects follow a lifecycle composed of three stages: Incubation, Mature and Archive.
Whether a project belongs to a particular stage is decided upon a set of lifecycle criteria.
The Technology Council is in charge of defining and applying these criteria.
In case of doubt, or for requesting a change in the stage of your project, you can contact the Technology Council.
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How can I participate to the Technology Council?

Every project leader has the right to become a member of the Technology Council.
Also, the Technology Council decides who can be accepted as one of its members.
If you are a project leader and are not yet a member of the Technology Council please contact us.
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What is the role of the Technology Council?

The Technology Council is responsible for:
- building the overall technical architecture, including defining technical guidelines
- providing technology validation
- making Project life-cycle decisions (see the Project page and the lifecycle criteria page)
- for monitoring production and overall project consistency.
The Technology Council also defines OW2's architecture vision; it validates the founding charters of Projects and Initiatives and it approves reuse of non-OW2 code in Projects and Initiatives.
The Technology Council also provides guidelines to the Management Office (the infrastructure runners) regarding the evolution of the OW2 technical platform.
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It is possible to obtain Java certification for some JSR as an OW2 project?

As a non-profit organisation, OW2 has negotiated a contract with Oracle, granting OW2 open source projects access to a precise list of Java TCKs, described in the IT Infrastructure page.
If you wish to add a JSR to this list, please contact the OW2 Management Office.
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Does an organization submitting a project to OW2 have to transfer its IPRs to OW2 or can IPRs stay with the organization?

There is no obligation to transfer any kind of IPR to OW2. OW2 is very liberal in this respect. In case a project, for any reason, wants to transfer an IPR to OW2, this is possible. Being a legal entity, OW2 can take over an IPR when necessary or required by a project. In case there is a CLA, the CLA is signed between the contributor and the project lead, not OW2.
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Does submitting a project requires a signing of any legal contract with OW2?

Submitting a project to the OW2 code base is a volunteer-based community process. It means that a project voluntarily joins the OW2 code base to benefit from its visibility and from our open source project best practices guidance. But, again, no obligation.
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Can an organization contribute to OW2 projects without becoming a member of OW2?

It is not an obligation to become a member to contribute. However, we strongly encourage organizations that submit projects to OW2 to become members. It is a question of fairness and mutual commitment. It also enables us to involve the organization in all our activities for the benefit of the project.
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Does OW2 impose a specific license to its projects?

No.
OW2 is quite liberal in this respect. Licenses must be OSI-recognized, but we recommend avoiding exotic licenses. Experience shows that a small number of mainstream licenses meet the expectations of contributors and users and cover most business models.
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