Wednesday, September 13, 2023

BND Tools 7.0 Release Candidate 1 is available

We are happy to announce the BND Tools 7.0.0 Release Candidate, which can now be downloaded here. Thanks to the support by members of the OSGi Working Group the code base has been ported to Java 17 and the release features the support of multi release JARs (among many other changes). For the changelog and release notes, please check out Github. You can also contribute via the issue tracker or discuss the latest release in the bnd forums.

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

OSGi Summit 2023

 

Hi OSGi enthusiasts!

After your vibrant and numerous attendance last year, the OSGi Working Group is pleased to announce the second edition of the OSGi Summit in Ludwigsburg, Germany.

As last year, the summit will be held in parallel with the EclipseCon from October 16-18, 2023. The first day is scheduled as OSGi Community Day and is a whole day loaded with talks on the newest things happening in the OSGi world, content about the community and many other exciting topics! The program for days 2 and 3 is still work in progress, but will include an open to attend face to face meeting of the OSGi Specification project. Stay tuned!

Help us make it a success and enter your submission to the Summit under: https://www.papercall.io/osgi-summit-23

We can also confirm that pricing will be as follows:

  • €40 + VAT for a 1-day-pass (Monday, Oct 16th)

  • €350 +VAT for the whole OSGi Summit (Monday to Wednesday, Oct 16th-18th)

This year's summit will be hosted in the Mozart I Room in the Nestor Hotel next to the Forum am Schlosspark in Ludwigsburg.

We will provide more detailed information soon!

Tuesday, September 6, 2022

OSGi Summit 2022

Hi, OSGi enthusiasts!

This year the OSGi Working Group is pleased to announce the first ever OSGi Summit in Ludwigsburg, Germany. The summit will be held in parallel to EclipseCon from October 24th to 26th, 2022. The first day is OSGi Community Day and is a whole day packed full with talks on the newest things happening in the OSGi world, content about community and many other topics. On day 2 and 3 the OSGi Specification Project and the OSGi Working Group Steering Committee are meeting and there will be a Birds of a Feather session for all OSGi enthusiasts.

This year's speakers include, among others, Dirk Fauth from Bosch, BJ Hargrave from IBM and David Bosschart from Adobe, but the full agenda has something to offer for anyone working with OSGi 😉

How can I get my ticket?

There is only a limited number of tickets available.

You can choose if you want to participate at the OSGi Community Day (Monday Only - €125) or if you want to participate at the whole OSGi Summit (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday - €350).

In order to get your ticket:

  • Go to the registration site
  • Enter your personal information
  • In the box labeled Special Pass Access code, enter this code: 22OSGI
  • Select OSGi Community Day Pass or OSGi Summit Pass
  • Answer the rest of the questions on the form
  • Enter your payment information
  • Be sure to click on REGISTER at the bottom of the page
  • You will receive a confirmation email after your registration is complete

Location?

The OSGi Summit itself will take place right next to the EclipseCon in the Film-und-Medienzentrum (FMZ) Ludwigsburg , a two-minute walk from the Forum am Schlosspark, the main conference venue. Lunch and receptions will be at the Forum.

Agenda

Monday (FMZ Konferenzraum 3)

Time Talk Speaker
08:30 Badge Pickup and Welcome Coffee at the Forum
09:00 Why build a go-kart from scratch when you can drive a race car for free. And also customizable Marcello Rinaldo Martina
09:40 Eclipse sensiNact - keeping you in touch with your data Thomas Calmant
10:20 From monolith to single-source to single-deployment Dirk Fauth
10:55 Break
11:15 Microservice vs Monolith - May the Modules be with you Jürgen Albert
11:55 OSGi.fx - Unleashing an OSGi console for modern era Amit Kumar Mondal
12:30 Lunch at the Forum
14:00 Feature flags in OSGi applications Christian Schneider
14:40 Deploying OSGi Features as Cloud Native containers David Bosschaert, Karl Pauls
15:15 Afternoon Break
15:35 Building with Bnd: It's not just for OSGi anymore BJ Hargrave
16:15 OSGi sucks! Mark Hoffman
17:00 Migrating to Jakarta EE, does an API by any other name smell as sweet? Tim Ward
17:35 Meet and Greet at the Forum
18:30 German User Forum
20:00 Finish and head over to the bar

Tuesday (FMZ Konferenzraum 3)

Time Talk
09:00 Welcome and Keynotes at the Forum
10:00 Specification Project Meeting
11:20 Morning Break
11:45 Specification Project Meeting (cont.)
13:05 Lunch at the Forum
14:30 Specification project Meeting (cont.)
15:50 Afternoon Break
16:15 OSGi Working Group Steering Committee Meeting
17:35 Finish and head over to the Stammtisch at the Forum

Wednesday (FMZ Konferenzraum 3)

Time Talk
09:00 Eclipse Community Awards and Keynotes at the Forum
10:00 Specification Project Meeting
11:20 Morning Break
11:45 Specification Project Meeting (cont.)
13:05 Lunch at the Forum
14:30 Specification project Meeting (cont.)
15:50 Afternoon Break
16:15 How to write an OSGi TCK crash course
18:00 Finish and head over to the Reception at the Forum

What more?

If you are also interested in the specification work or generally in OSGi:

  • On Wednesday at 16:15 you can get a crash course on how to write an OSGi Technology Compatibility Kit
  • On Tuesday and Wednesday (whole day) you can take part in the OSGi Specification Project Meetings, so if you ever wondered how the OSGi Specs come to life, then this is a session for you

We can't wait to meet you all in Ludwigsburg 😊

Friday, January 21, 2022

Goodby 2021, welcome 2022!

 In the spirit of the presidential letter from the OSGi Alliance days, I’d like to take the time to recap the previous year and give you all a heads up on what is to be expected in the new year.


The past year has been a new Playing Field for us. With the transition to the Eclipse Foundation we had to figure out how everything works and find our feet so to speak. It was our first year but we learned a lot and managed to reach most of the admittedly vague goals we gave ourselves for the first year. Viewed from the outside we managed the following:

  • Setup the working Group

  • Establish the Specification and Technology Project (Yes, the technology Project is not officially in the scope of the Working Group)

  • Handed the OSGi github repository to the Eclipse Foundation.

  • Finalize and Release Compendium R8


A lot of work was done behind the scenes to transfer assets from the OSGi Alliance to the OSGi Working Group and to establish the framework to operate under the Eclipse Foundation. Daniel Bandera, the previous, long time president moved on into well earned retirement. As the Steering Committee we owe him a debt of gratitude because he shouldered a lot of the administrative effort that was required. We also had quite a productive BoF at the EclipseCon and a lot of the input we received helped us to set the course for 2022.


What’s cooking for the new year?


Before we dive into the new year, we need a quick view back in history. The OSGi Alliance was created in 1999 with the sole focus of creating Standards. At the time Open Source was around but not that prominent. As most Members had closed source solutions in mind, the Alliance was structurally hampered in its community building efforts. This should have happened by the member companies while they promote their specific implementations. 

For this reason we explicitly and prominently put community building and promotion of the technology in our charter. That said, we will focus this year on making good on that promise.

The first step is already in progress. We are currently working together with the Marketing Team of the Foundation to give the www.osgi.org site the attention it deserves. Besides this our community goals are as follows:

  • Create a questionnaire for the community to get input on what people are interested in and act accordingly.

  • Create an Examples Project demonstrating each specification.

  • Facilitate Spaces of Interested groups to exchange thoughts and ideas

  • Define parameters for an annual Working Group event

  • Discuss a return to F2F Meetings (if COVID allows)


Alongside all of this we will also work on new releases and aim towards a more frequent release cycle of specifications and bundles. 


The Program Plan was recently approved by the Foundation and is published in the Working Group google drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/19d9MJLbjN5QaPfdAmNFC5TFkPKgVJW9D


For all of this we hope for your support and input! We are a volunteer army now more than ever and are happy about every helping hand and mind. We will actively throw ideas around to become more community friendly and will require your input on this.


With this in mind, we wish you all a productive and healthy new year and hope that we can get a chance to see you again in person!


Best regards,


your OSGi Working Group Team.


Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Update on the OSGi Working Group

Dear OSGi enthusiasts,

It has been a couple of months since we announced the move of your favorite Specification Organization to the Eclipse Foundation. We have been silent since, but this does not mean that we have been inactive. So we want to use this chance to give you a brief update on the current state of affairs.


In early January we started our work, by forming the OSGi Working Group Steering Committee. We basically started the Working Group (WG) up by ratifying the Charter. Despite our Veterans on the Committee, we needed to find our feet and learn how to navigate the new waters of the Eclipse Foundation. Thanks to the tremendous support we receive from the Eclipse Team we persevered and made a lot of progress to manage the necessary formalities.


What is the current status you ask? We have formed the following bodies:

OSGi WG Steering Committee

The Steering Committee is the overall governing body of the WG. If you are interested in details on the function of the committee, have a look at the Powers and Duties section in the Charter. At the moment we have two elected Participant members in addition to the Strategic members with a permanent seat. The seat for an elected Committer representative is currently vacant and an election will take place in the May timeframe, as soon as the Projects are completely set up and everyone has had sufficient time to join. 


For the time being, we have adopted the vanilla Eclipse Specification Process as suggested by the Specification Committee. All the specification work will fall under the Implementation Patent License. We are currently working on the migration of the old Alliance assets (Website, Twitter etc.) and to chaperon the projects that are being set up as we speak.

OSGi WG Specification Committee

This committee governs the Specification Process and votes on the final Specifications. It thus steers the technological direction our Specifications will take. For more details you can again look at the charter. 

At the moment it is composed of the same members as the Steering Committee. The real work of the committee will start once specification work begins in the OSGi Specification Project. We need to get a feeling for the Eclipse Specification Process and need to see if we want to make adjustments.


OSGi Specification Project

This is where the magic happens. All specification work will be done in this project. It is already open to join, however you must be a member of the OSGi Working Group to be a project committer. The original OSGi github repository was handed over to the Eclipse Foundation and is now public. It is currently undergoing final integration into Eclipse Foundation processes. As soon as this is done, we can commence our actual specification work. How we will proceed with the design repository, is still an open point and will be addressed soon. We are currently discussing things like: Do we want to keep RFPs and RFCs?, How will they be written in the future?, etc.  If you want to get on the notification train for this project, please subscribe to the project's mailing list. The

OSGi Technology Project

Here our companion projects like osgi-test or OSGi enRoute. If you are a committer already or plan to become one, please join the project. Becoming a committer in this project does not require you to be a member of the OSGi Working Group.


What else?

The old osgi.org website is dead and the current version is just a placeholder. Creating fitting and prevailing content is currently discussed and we hope to get the new version online as soon as possible. Javadoc and Specifications are still available under docs.osgi.org.

There are a lot of other minutiae we will not bother you with. We still have a lot of work ahead of us and as a volunteer army, everyone who is willing to help is welcome. So please spread the word. 

We try to get everything up and running as soon as possible and will keep you posted.


You Committee Team.


Wednesday, December 9, 2020

OSGi Core Release 8 is now final and published

The specifications, reference implementations, and compliance tests for OSGi Core Release 8 have been approved as final by the members of the OSGi Alliance as one of the final actions of the OSGi Alliance as we transition the mission to the OSGi Working Group at the Eclipse Foundation.

You can find the online version of the Core Release 8 specification on the OSGi Specification Project Documentation website. A PDF version is also available for download. Javadoc is also available and the artifacts are now available on Maven Central.

As part of the mission transfer to the OSGi Working Group, the work will of course be done in open source projects. So I have recently submitted project proposals at Eclipse to form the OSGi Specification Project and the OSGi Technology Project. The OSGi Specification Project will be responsible for OSGi specification development and evolution and will take direction from the OSGi Working Group as a specification project under the Eclipse Foundation Specification Process. The OSGi Technology Project will host OSGi technology-related (non-specification) projects like the exciting osgi-test project we recently presented at EclipseCon 2020.

One of the immediate results of moving the mission to Eclipse is that we have now made the OSGi git repositories public. Check out the OSGi GitHub organization and, in particular, the OSGi Specification Project Build repository.

Finally, I would like to encourage everyone to consider joining the OSGi Working Group and get involved in continuing to evolve the OSGi specifications. Your company can join and individuals can also join as well. Work on Compendium Release 8 was well underway in the OSGi Alliance when we started the mission transfer to the OSGi Working Group at the Eclipse Foundation and we will get right back at it once we get the OSGi Working Group and OSGi Specification Project bootstrapped at Eclipse. I hope to see you there!

Monday, October 19, 2020

Announcement of Transition to Eclipse Foundation

It has been over twenty-one years since the OSGi Alliance was formed - sponsored by several major corporations such as Ericsson, IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems - to create open specifications, reference implementations, and compliance tests to establish an architecture and programming model that was modular, dynamic, and service-oriented.  These standards were initially targeted at “Internet gateways”, what we would call today an Edge Computing device, but over the years would address a plethora of computing environments.

The world has changed a lot since 1999.  Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, Ericsson is a much different company, and IBM and Oracle are no longer the biggest names in tech.    The world of software specifications development has also seen vast changes, being heavily impacted and influenced today by open source projects.

In 1999 open source projects were just starting to become recognized by major Information Technology providers.  The Apache Software Foundation was just getting started, the Linux operating system was beginning to be supported by computer hardware manufacturers, and it would be another 5 years before the Eclipse Foundation was established.

Now open source projects have become the primary source for open technology for software developers.  Even the OSGi Alliance depends on open source projects for the vast majority of its reference implementations.   A “code first” approach has taken hold for open standards too.  We can see examples of this at the Eclipse Foundation in their Jakarta EE platform project and at OASIS in their OASIS Open Projects.

Another thing has changed too, the OSGi Alliance no longer has the critical mass necessary to continue as a stand-alone organization.   

When this became evident to the OSGi Board of Directors, they began to examine and plan how best to deal with the future.  After a great deal of work examining every reasonable alternative it was decided the best course of action was to transfer the assets of the OSGi Alliance to the Eclipse Foundation, with the expectation that future specification development will continue there, and dissolve the OSGi Alliance.  The OSGi Board of Directors has reached an agreement with the Eclipse Foundation to establish an Eclipse OSGi Working Group which will be the home for the continued evolution of the OSGi specifications.  Current OSGi Alliance members and others that wish to participate will need to be members of the Eclipse Foundation itself, and also members of the Eclipse OSGi Working Group.   The Eclipse Foundation intends to waive the membership fees for the OSGi Working Group for the rest of 2020. 

To quote Mike Milinkovich, the Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation, “The Eclipse Foundation is pleased to become the home for the future evolution of the OSGi's specifications.  Our working group model and the Eclipse Foundation Specification Process both provide a natural framework for the important work that continues under the OSGi banner, and our communities are both very comfortable with each other already. We thank the OSGi Alliance’s Board of Directors for their trust, and we look forward to working with OSGi Alliance’s members and developers as we continue down this path.”

I certainly hope that everyone will join the efforts at the Eclipse Foundation to continue the work that started 21 years ago.  

It has been a pleasure to serve you all these years and I look forward to continuing to work with you in the Eclipse OSGi Working Group.

Best wishes for the future,

Dan Bandera, President of the OSGi Alliance

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
FAQ

Q: Why the Eclipse Foundation? 
A: The OSGi Alliance and the Eclipse Foundation share many of the same members, and we have had a long, synergistic relationship between our organizations.  
  • The Eclipse Equinox project has hosted the OSGi Framework Reference Implementation for many years and many releases.  
  • The Eclipse Foundation, like the OSGi Alliance, is a non-profit, vendor-neutral organization which simplifies the transfer of OSGi Alliance assets and mission to them.
  • We have held joint EclipseCon / OSGi Community Event developer conferences for the past 8 years.    
  • The Eclipse Foundation is home for many Java technology related open source projects like Jakarta EE, OpenJ9, OMR,  MicroProfile, Transformer, Vert.x and many more.
  • The Eclipse Foundation has developed a robust specification process over the last two years which can produce specifications allowing for Intellectual Property grants and benefits very similar to those of OSGi Specifications.
  • The Eclipse Foundation continues to thrive and grow which provides a safe home for the planned Eclipse OSGi Working Group.

Q: Where will we find the old OSGi specifications in the future ?
A: Currently published OSGi specifications are available at https://docs.osgi.org/. The planned Eclipse OSGi Working Group will decide if a different location is appropriate.

Q: For existing published OSGi Specifications what will be users/implementors rights be after the OSGi Alliance dissolves?
A: There will be no change in rights. The existing published OSGi Specifications will remain available under their existing license.

Q: What about reference implementations and compliance tests?
A: Almost all existing OSGi Reference Implementations are in open source projects at the Eclipse Foundation or the Apache Software Foundation (Eclipse Equinox, Apache Aries, Apache Felix, etc.) and should continue to be available directly from those projects.  Those that are not will most likely be made available in a GitHub repository sometime in the future. The planned Eclipse OSGi Working Group will make this decision.

Q: How will the Eclipse specification process differ from the OSGi specification process?
A: BIG Question! There will be changes. Please see the following resources (in the order listed):

Q: Will new specifications from the Eclipse OSGi Working Group have a different license ?
A: It is expected that specifications released from the Eclipse OSGi Working Group will use the Eclipse Foundation Specification License. See https://www.eclipse.org/legal/efsl.php.

Q: How will this transition affect the development of Bnd/Bndtools?
A: This transition won't affect Bnd/Bndtools which is a separate open source project.

Q: What are the next steps? What should be done to participate in the Eclipse OSGi Working Group?
A: To participate in future OSGi specification development you will first need to be a member of the Eclipse Foundation itself. Subsequent to that, you will also need to be a member of the Eclipse OSGi Working Group.

Q: How can we join the Eclipse OSGi Working Group?
A: At this time, the Eclipse OSGi Working Group has yet to be formed. So right now, you can join the Eclipse Foundation itself and we will communicate when the Eclipse OSGi Working Group is ready to be joined.

Q: Who do I contact if I have further questions?
A: For OSGi Alliance questions, you can contact the OSGi Executive Director John Ehrig. For Eclipse Foundation questions, you can visit https://www.eclipse.org/membership/, or contact Eclipse Foundation VP Member Services Paul White.