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.