So What's Next?

The ObjectWeb consortium will end on Dec 31, 2006. As explained in previous entries, an association called OW2 is being incepted.

This is the opportunity for me to thank (again) many people, actually so many I cannot mention them all. Special congratulations to those who were at the orgin of ObjectWeb. Their endeavour is going a long way. Thanks to the executive committee members, who made it possible and who, day in day out, run the community and acted, often behind the scenes, to let good things happen. Thanks to the developers and contributors: without them ObjectWeb would be an empty shell.

Personnaly, the consortium being over, I will no longer serve as executive director (it really goes without saying!) On January 1, 2007, I will keep serving as project director at INRIA. Staff from the project I lead will sometimes be involved in the OW2 operations. Yet INRIA will be a member of the association, but no longer the legal representative as it used to be for ObjectWeb.

Seasons greeting. Merry Christmas, happy new year, best wishes for 2007 to all the community members and friends around!

Letter to the ObjectWeb and OrientWare Communities

Dear ObjectWeb members and partners,

ObjectWeb is about to undergo the biggest evolution since its foundation as a consortium in 2002 by Bull, France Telecom and INRIA.

ObjectWeb: Success and Evolution

The ObjectWeb story started somewhere around Grenoble in the Alp mountains in the late 90's and now spans the whole planet with active participation of members from several European countries to China to the United States to Brazil. Over the last 5 years, our community experienced tremendous growth, now counting over 70 corporate members, over 700 committers, thousands of individual members and contributors from many countries in all continents. Our middleware code base counts over a hundred projects for a total of tens of million lines of open source code.

This phase of growth brought new opportunities and new challenges. In order to better address them, the Board of Directors decided in early 2005 to start a task force with the mission of evaluating possible scenarios and implementing the most suitable of them. This mission code-named “ObjectWeb v2” has been successful due to major commitment of ObjectWeb’s community. As a result, it was decided to make the transition from the current organization, namely a consortium hosted by INRIA, to a full-fledged, non-profit independent legal entity. This new entity, whose bylaws have been approved by ObjectWeb's Board of Directors, will be incepted in January 2007 under the French law as a non-profit association headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.

Creation of OW2: a Nonprofit Legal Entity

The new organization is registered under the name “OW2 Consortium” or OW2 for short. This new name is the result of ObjectWeb and OrientWare joining their forces to build a global and powerful alliance. After extensive consultation of the community, its rules of operation have been defined on the following principles:

· enhanced commitment from the members through three levels of membership: Strategic, Corporate and Individual

· deliberate market awareness with the underlying rationale to bridge the gap between enterprise developers and users

· a refined governance model promoting increased participation from the community, with three councils addressing technology, ecosystem development and operations

· possibilities to create local chapters so as to facilitate international development in a decentralized way

In Practice: What to Expect, What Actions to Take

The ObjectWeb consortium agreement is ending on December 31, 2006. OW2 Consortium is starting on January 1, 2007. Current members are warmly invited to join OW2 but memberships will not be automatically transferred. For this reason, it is very important that ObjectWeb members take the necessary actions to join the OW2 Consortium. Strategic and corporate members joining OW2 in the first quarter of year 2007, be them former ObjectWeb members or not, will be deemed Co-Founders of the association.

Joining OW2 will most likely require the involvement of your legal department. All necessary legal documents will be available online shortly and additional information is available on request. As CEO of the association, Cedric Thomas will lead the operations and be your main contact for all practical information.

No personal information will be transferred from ObjectWeb to OW2 without the explicit consent of the user. A simplified procedure will be put in place so that registered members and users of the ObjectWeb online facility can opt-in to have their personal information transferred to the association. Details are to be sent on all ObjectWeb mailing lists shortly.

From now on, new membership and new project submission will no longer be accepted by ObjectWeb. However in the short term the ObjectWeb web site and Forge will be kept up and running, so project and community activities be carried on without interruption.

We want to thank you all for having made OW2 Consortium possible. We are now counting on you to make it an even better place for great projects. We invite you all, developers, researchers, open source enthusiasts from over the world, to participate in this new and exciting endeavor. Last but not least, we would like to take advantage of this message to present you our most sincere season's greetings and wish you the best for year 2007. And long live OW2!

With warmest regards,

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

Jean Pierre Laisné – ObjectWeb Chairman

François Letellier – ObjectWeb Executive Director

ObjectWeb and Orientware merge to form OW2 Consortium

The new "OW2 Consortium" is the result of ObjectWeb and Orientware joining their forces to build a global and powerful alliance. After extensive consultation of the community, its rules of operation have been defined on the following principles:

• enhanced commitment from the members, through three levels of membership (Strategic, Corporate and Individual)
• deliberate market awareness with the underlying rationale to bridge the gap between enterprise developers and users
• a refined governance model promoting increased participation from the community, with three councils addressing technology, ecosystem development and operations
• possibilities to create local chapters so to facilitate international development in a decentralized way.

The ObjectWeb consortium agreement ends on December 31, 2006 and OW2 Consortium takes over on January 1, 2007. Current ObjectWeb and OrientWare members (along with new comers) are invited to join OW2.

Membership will not be automatically transferred. New membership and new project submission will no longer be accepted by ObjectWeb. However in the short term, the ObjectWeb web site and Forge will be kept up and running, so project and community activities can be carried on without interruption.

End of ObjectWeb Consortium Agreement

The ObjectWeb story started somewhere around Grenoble in the Alp mountains in the late 90's and now spans the whole planet with active participation of members from several European countries to China to the United States to Brazil.

This phase of growth brought new opportunities and new challenges. In order to better address them, the Board of Director decided in early 2005 to start a task force with the mission of evaluating possible scenarios and implementing the most suitable of them. As a result, it was decided to make the transition from the current organization, namely a consortium represented by INRIA, to a full-fledged, nonprofit independent legal entity. This new entity will be incepted in January 2006 as a nonprofit association under the French law headquartered in Brussels, Belgium.

The ObjectWeb consortium agreement will end on December 31, 2006. Current members are strongly encouraged to join OW2, but memberships will not be automatically transfered.

In the short term, I keep my hat as project director with INRIA, but my mandate as Executive Director of ObjectWeb will end on December 31, 2006. This is an opportunity to look back to the good work done so far. Over the last 5 years, our community experienced tremendous growth, now counting over 70 corporate members, over 700 committers, thousands of individual members and contributors from many countries in all continents. Our middleware code based counts a hundredth projects for a total of tens of million lines of open source code.

I would like to thank all the people involved in this story, with special congratulations to the executive commitee (starting with former executive directors G. Vandome and C. Ney) and the team at INRIA, who has been very dedicated to its mission over the last 5 years.

Last ObjectWeb Board Meeting

On Dec 11 & 12 was the quarterly ObjectWeb Architecture meeting, held in Paris (Alcatel HQ). A board and a college meeting were held on Dec 11. They were the last such meetings to be held in the framework of ObjectWeb.

ObjectWeb is an agreement (basically a contract) which ends on Dec 31, 2006. It has been decided not to renew it... but to incept a new, independant nonprofit legal entity instead. Code-named "ObjectWeb v2" so far, this new association is to be registered by the end of the year. It will then after continue and expand ObjectWeb's activity under the name "OW2". OW2 is really a name for insider: it basically comes from the collaboration between ObjectWeb and OrientWare - two O-something-W-something names.

The last board meeting was the opportunity to look back to the tremendous progress achieved by ObjectWeb over the last 5 years. Some figures... as of today, the community counts:

• 72 corporate members (+1 registration pending)
• 8177 registered users in the Forge
  
• 723 CVS committers

2006 was anticipated as a year of transition between ObjectWeb as it used to be and OW2. Thanks to all people involved in the Executive Committee, with the help of the Board and contribution from the members, we ran ObjectWeb in line with the then current consortium agreement. Since April 2006, 15 (+1) new corporate members joined and 15 new projects were added to the code base (again, +1 pending). This is a pretty vibrant community, which is now to be handed over to OW2 for continued expansion.

Two ObjectWeb Projects Winners of Free Software Awards 2006

OpenMobileIS and SpagoBI won Gold and Silver Awards in the 'Company Management' category of the Free Software Awards 2006. OpenMobileIS is a Java Framework conceived to integrate mobile application developement business. SpagoBI is a complete suite for the development of Business Intelligence projects in an integrated environment.
The picture show Philippe Delrieu (Ubikis, left) and Marc Sallières (Altic, right) holding the awards during the cocktail reception.