OW2 is an independent

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

international

consortium A consortium () 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 for achieving a ...

dedicated to developing

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

code infrastructure for

middleware Middleware is a type of computer software program 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 imple ...

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

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

, and

the Americas The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America.'' Webster's New World College Dictionary'', 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. When viewed as a sin ...

, 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 and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

. 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 French Institute for Research in Comp ...

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

, and

France Telecom Orange S.A. (; formerly , stylised as france telecom) is a French multinational telecommunications corporation founded in 1988 and headquartered in Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris. ''Orange'' has been the corporation's main brand for mobile, ...

; in 2005

signed an agreement with OrientWare, a joint project between

Peking University Peking University (PKU) is a Public university, public Types of universities and colleges in China#By designated academic emphasis, university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of the Peop ...

, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (now

Beihang University Beihang University (BUAA; formerly as Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The univers ...

National University of Defense Technology The National University of Defense Technology (NUDT; ) is a national public research university headquartered in Kaifu, Changsha, Hunan, China. It is affiliated with the Central Military Commission. The university is part of Project 211, ...

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

Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS; ) is the national academy for natural sciences and the highest consultancy for science and technology of the People's Republic of China. It is the world's largest research organization, with 106 research i ...

. All became founding members of OW2 along with Engineering,

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...

, and

Thales Group Thales S.A., Trade name, trading as Thales Group (), is a French multinational corporation, multinational aerospace and defence industry, defence corporation specializing in electronics. It designs, develops and manufactures a wide variety of aer ...

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, or Concurrent Versioning System) is a version control system originally developed by Dick Grune in July 1986. Design CVS operates as a front end to Revision Control System (RCS), an older version control ...

(CVS) and

Apache Subversion Apache Subversion (often abbreviated SVN, after its command name ''svn'') is a version control system distributed as open source under the Apache License. Software developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files su ...

(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 ...

. Later, support for CVS was disabled and hosting via

Git Git () is a distributed version control system that tracks versions of files. It is often used to control source code by programmers who are developing software collaboratively. Design goals of Git include speed, data integrity, and suppor ...

using

Gitorious Gitorious was a free and open source web application for hosting collaborative free and open-source software development projects using Git revision control. Although it was freely available to be downloaded and installed, it was written primari ...

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 is a software forge primarily developed by GitLab Inc. It is available as a community edition and a commercial edition. History GitLab was created in 2011 by Ukrainian programmer Dmitriy Zaporozhets as a side project written in Rub ...

History

Activities

Projects

Hosting

OW2con

References

Further reading

External links