Projects
This page contains information on how OW2 manages projects. Please read until the end.
OW2 Projects
Overview
The Consortium's activities for software development are organized into Projects. A Project regroups either development actions corresponding to one or more technical software components or the integration of different technical components in order to build a platform. Projects are the raison d'être of OW2, and without projects, OW2 just would not exist. Projects represent the fundamental activity. At OW2, everything starts with a Project. Building on the legacy of ObjectWeb and OrientWare, OW2 is fully committed to managing open source projects. They currently cover a broad scope of infrastructure software functionality including middleware and generic applications, application platforms, persistency/database solutions, workflow engines, software engineering, etc. OW2 provides a "home" as well as a showcase to open source software projects. Each project evolves through a project lifecycle. OW2 already hosts some 100 projects. The Technology Council is responsible for building the overall technical architecture, including defining technical guidelines, providing technology validation, making Project lifecycle decisions, and monitoring production and overall Projects consistency.Submitting a new project
You can submit a project directly on the project submission page.The fully executed Individual membership of the project leader is the minimum membership requirement for a project to be accepted in incubation. The proposal is then debated on the Technology Council mailing list which evaluates its relevance for OW2 in terms of complementarities, synergies, licence, support, etc. The Technology Council must reach a consensus to adopt the project. Each project must also be presented and discussed at a Technology Council meeting. Once it is provisioned in the OW2 Forge, you can start working on it.
Project selection criteria
Project submissions are evaluated by the Technology Council which decides by consensus whether or not to host the project on the OW2 infrastructure. The Technology Council will decide after evaluating and reaching consensus on the four principal following criteria:- Is it infrastructure software at large (middleware, libraries, tooling, application platform, etc.)?
- Does the team show goodwill to synergize with other OW2 projects?
- Is the license compatible with the IPR policy?
- Is the Project able to release code and/or foster a community?
Competition between projects
OW2 recognizes that a dynamic code base must accept some level of competition between its projects. Moreover the OW2 project portfolio is already quite extensive and could not grow without some friction or overlap between projects. Projects with overlapping or 'competitive' features will be allowed on the OW2 Forge and in OW2 initiatives so long as they are: 1) Provided by an OW2 Member. 2) Distributed under an OSI-approved license. 3) Differentiated from existing projects. 4) Accepted by the Technology Council.Projects Life Cycle
The project life cycle is composed of three stages: Incubation, Mature and Archive. New projects start in the Incubation stage. They then might move to the Mature stage and, ultimately, end up in Archive stage depending on periodic evaluation by the Technology Council ( see the project lifecycle criteria page ). The Technology Council should organize regular reviews of projects to manage their lifecycle status.Interoperability Clusters: the Himalaya program
In 2008, the OW2 community launched a long-term effort to develop seamless interoperability between the different software components which comprise its code base. This long-term, bottom-up, peer-to-peer (and on-and-off!) endeavour strives to enhance technical relationship between projects. Some projects with natural complementarities will group together to create what we call interoperability clusters. These clusters will then connect to form a comprehensive range; hence the name of the program.
In 2011, this effort will be resumed based on selected pivotal projects. Stay tuned.
Packages
Many OW2 projects already come as ready-to-use packages. They are provided as complete archives which only require downloading and installation in order to be used.
You can access the OW2 code base organized in several functional categories here.
Other OW2 projects are not listed here because no stable version is packaged so far. To download them, you need to use the Forge. As developments move forward, more projects will be made available for downloading, so this list is going to expand. Stay tuned and come back to check for new packages.