OW2 Consortium
 | |
| Motto | The Open Source Community for Infrastructure Software |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1 January 2007 |
| Type | Consortium |
| Legal status | Non-Profit |
| Purpose | Open Source Software Development |
| Headquarters | Paris |
Membership | Around 6000 IT professionals |
CEO | Cédric Thomas |
Staff | 8 employees |
| Website |
www |
OW2 is an independent non-profit organization dedicated to developing open source code infrastructure for enterprise information systems. OW2 federates IT vendors and users, universities, and research centers from Europe, Asia, and the Americas, representing thousands of IT professionals. OW2's mission is to develop an open source code base of middleware and infrastructure software, and to foster a vibrant community and business ecosystem.
History
OW2 was founded in 2007 as an independent organization dedicated to fostering the ObjectWeb code base of open source middleware. ObjectWeb was a joint project launched in 2002 by INRIA, Bull, and France Telecom; in 2005 INRIA signed an agreement with OrientWare, a joint project between Peking University, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (now Beihang University), National University of Defense Technology, CVIC Software Engineering Co., Ltd, and the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. All became founding members of OW2 along with Engineering, Red Hat, and Thales. In 2017 OW2 celebrated its tenth anniversary.
Key Dates
2002: Bull, France Telecom, and INRIA launch the ObjectWeb Consortium
2006: Merger of ObjectWeb and OrientWare
2007: OW2 Consortium is launched, leveraging the ObjectWeb code base. China Local Chapter launch.
2008: 1,000 individual members milestone passed. Europe Local Chapter, Business Intelligence Initiative launch.
2009: First OW2 Annual Conference. JOnAS 5 Java EE 5 certification and JavaOne community booth. Brazil Local Chapter launch. Open Solutions Alliance merges with OW2. First OW2 Programming Contest.
2010: Open Source Cloudware Initiative (OSCi) launch. Software Quality Assurance and Trustworthiness (SQuAT) program launch. First collaborative project launch: CHOReOS FP7.
2011: CompatibleOne project launch, First FISL participation, First Bay Area OW2 Meetup, First China Open Source Week.
2012: OpenCloudware, XLcloud, Ocean and RISCOSS projects launched, Future Internet Software and Services initiative (FISSi) launch, First Open Source Solutions roadshow in Brazil.
2013: CHOReOS project presented at CeBIT. First Cloud Interoperability Week organized.
2014: Big Data initiative launched. New event series: OW2 Open Cloud Forums. New OW2 Webinars. OW2con'14 annual conference held at Open Stack Summit, in Paris.
2015: New collaborative projects: OCCIware, AppHub, CHOReVOLUTION. OW2 Privacy and Security initiative launched (PRISi) launch. First Open Cloud Park co-organization at Cloud Expo Europe in London.
2016: Accessibility Initiative (OSAi) launch. SQuAT becomes OSCAR (Open-source Software Capability Assessment Radar). Special Jury Award at Paris Open Source Summit.
2017: OW2 celebrates its 10th anniversary. Open source project market readiness index announced.
Vision
OW2 aims at leveraging open source to foster collaborative innovation and create value by sharing expertise, experience, and opportunities. The community is positioned in the open source value chain as a platform aimed at connecting producers of code and that code's respective users.
Open source projects are collaborative by nature; OW2 offers projects and contributors a neutral environment where they can work together independently of private interests.
OW2's key values are: Openness, Trust, Fairness, Transparency and Independence.
Mission
OW2 is dedicated to developing a code base of open source software for enterprise information systems and to fostering a vibrant community and business ecosystem.
To achieve these aims, OW2 offers three kind of services:
1) Technical infrastructure:
OW2 provides developers with state-of-the-art technical infrastructure, offering project hosting and providing a number of services to facilitate the collaborative work (versioning, bug tracking, licenses, etc.). This can reduce time-to-market and development time for developers, reduce the technology risk for end-users, and allow for important technical guidance through use of best practices and standards.
2) Community Services:
OW2 runs an open source governance system helping members connect freely with each other and with the international open source ecosystem at large. OW2 Governance provides the collaboration framework for its activities, namely, its Projects, Initiatives, and Local Chapters (see below). As part of its governance efforts, OW2 develops its own project quality and assessment system made available as the Open Source Capability Assessment Radar (OSCAR) and the Market Readiness Index (MRI). This facilitates Project collaboration and increases contributors and growth.
3) Marketing Services:
OW2 engages in marketing activities to promote its brand, its code base and its members. OW2 regularly takes part in industry conferences and trade shows around the world including Cloud Expo Europe, Cloud Computing World Expo, FISL, FOSDEM, OpenStack Summit, OSCON, Paris Open Source Summit, etc. It also hosts its own yearly conference, known as OW2con (see below).
In addition, OW2 provides information dissemination and community building services for R&D collaborative projects funded by European or French research programs.
The Activities
Projects
OW2 hosts some 100 open source Projects spanning enterprise solutions and components, application frameworks, engineering tools, and libraries. Projects make up the OW2 code base and are foundation of all OW2 activities. Projects can be submitted into the OW2 code base after meeting some minimum requirements and applying. At this point, a Project is considered to be in "Incubation," the first of OW2's defined lifecycle stages. Upon gaining code contributors, growing, and meeting rigorous requirements, a Project can apply for "Mature" status. The application is then reviewed by the OW2 Technology Council and granted Mature status or kept in Incubation. If a Project stops evolving and updating, it can then be moved to the third lifecycle stage, "Archive," where it is no longer active but still benefits from OW2's infrastructure services.
Some major OW2 Projects include: ASM, Bonita, Chameleon, CLIF, DocDoku, Easybeans, Emerginov, Fractal, JOnAS, JORAM, JOTM, LemonLDAP:NG, Lutece, PetalsESB, ProActive, Preludes, SAT4J, Spagic, Spago4Q, SpagoBI, Talend Studio, Telosys, WebLab, and XWiki.
Initiatives
Initiatives are joint efforts by multiple members targeted at meeting a common market need. Initiatives arise from examining market trends and identifying areas of need. Initiatives are constituted by several projects and facilitate their implementations into business solutions by systems integrators, OEMs, and end-users. Together, they provide the expertise to implement solutions built upon OW2 technologies.
List of current Initiatives in Operational status launched by OW2:
- Open Source Software in Big Cities Initiative
- Open Source Accessibility Initiative
- Privacy and Security Initiative
- Future Internet Initiative
- Open Source Cloudware Initiative
- Big Data Initiative
Local Chapters
A Local Chapter is a group of OW2 members who combine their efforts to promote the goals of the consortium within a community characterized by its geography or language. Current OW2 Local Chapters can be found throughout Europe, China, Brazil, and North America.
OW2con
OW2con is the OW2 Consortium's annual community conference. OW2con is for all those with an interest in community and independent open source software. It aims to bring all members of the open source world and the OW2 community together for two days of keynotes, roundtables, demos, talks, and lunches.
Traditionally held in Paris, the goal of OW2con is to expand OW2's influence and reach in the open source world by creating a stronger community, increasing visibility, and educating the public about the possibilities and future of open source software.
The most recent OW2con, OW2con'17, focused on the new challenges of making open source software mainstream and featured over 30 speakers. OW2con'16 focused on bringing code to product, and OW2con'15 was themed around how to create successful open source governance.
Articles
Building a cloud ecosystem with open source, May 2013
OW2 Consortium: Building Beyond Europe, June 2017
Related links
Systematic groupe thématique Logiciel libre.