OW2 is an independent

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

international

consortium A consortium (plural: consortia) is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources fo ...

dedicated to developing

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. ...

code infrastructure for

middleware Middleware is a type of computer software that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to implement co ...

information systems. OW2 federates IT vendors and users, universities, and research centers from Europe,

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

, and

the Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with ...

, representing IT professionals.

History

OW2 was founded in 2007 as an independent organization to foster the ObjectWeb code base of

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

. ObjectWeb was a joint project launched in 2002 by

INRIA The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics. It was created under the name ''Institut de recherche en informatiq ...

Bull A bull is an intact (i.e., not castrated) adult male of the species '' Bos taurus'' (cattle). More muscular and aggressive than the females of the same species (i.e., cows), bulls have long been an important symbol in many religions, includ ...

, and

France Telecom Orange S.A. (), formerly France Télécom S.A. (stylized as france telecom) is a French multinational telecommunications corporation. It has 266 million customers worldwide and employs 89,000 people in France, and 59,000 elsewhere. In 2015, ...

; in 2005

signed an agreement with OrientWare, a joint project between

Peking University Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charte ...

, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (now

Beihang University Beihang University, previously known as Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (), abbreviated as BUAA or Beihang ( zh, c=北航, p=), is a national public research university located in Beijing, China, specializing in engineering, t ...

National University of Defense Technology The National University of Defense Technology (NUDT; ) is a national public research university in Changsha, Hunan, China. Founded in 1953 as the People's Liberation Army Military Academy of Engineering, the institution is directly affiliate ...

, CVIC Software Engineering Co., Ltd, and the Institute of Software at the

Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); ), known by Academia Sinica in English until the 1980s, is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for natural sciences. It has historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Republ ...

. All became founding members of OW2 along with Engineering,

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide. Red Hat has become ass ...

, and

Thales Group Thales Group () is a French multinational company that designs, develops and manufactures electrical systems as well as devices and equipment for the aerospace, defence, transportation and security sectors. The company is headquartered in Pari ...

Activities

Projects

OW2 hosts circa 100 open-source projects. 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 can use OW2's infrastructure services.

Hosting

In 2008, only a year after its founding, OW2 began hosting its projects via

Concurrent Versions System Concurrent Versions System (CVS, also known as the Concurrent Versioning System) is a revision control system originally developed by Dick Grune in July 1986. CVS operates as a front end to RCS, an earlier system which operates on single fil ...

(CVS) and

Apache Subversion Apache Subversion (often abbreviated SVN, after its command name ''svn'') is a software versioning and revision control system distributed as open source under the Apache License. Software developers use Subversion to maintain current and histo ...

(SVN) using

GForge GForge is a commercial service originally based on the Alexandria software behind SourceForge, a web-based project management and collaboration system which was licensed under the GPL. Open source versions of the GForge code were released from 20 ...

. Later, support for CVS was disabled and hosting via

Git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data inte ...

using Gitorious began. In 2018, only a decade after it had begun using it, OW2 decommissioned its use of GForge and SVN in lieu of Git, after having migrated to using

GitLab GitLab Inc. is an open-core company that operates GitLab, a DevOps software package which can develop, secure, and operate software. The open source software project was created by Ukrainian developer Dmitriy Zaporozhets and Dutch developer S ...

History

Activities

Projects

Hosting

OW2con

References

Further reading

External links