ObjectWeb V2 Inaugural Workshop

ObjectWeb V2 Inaugural Workshop took place on July 17 and 18 at the picturesque Château des Mesnuls, near Paris, which was kindly made available by Thales to the ObjectWeb V2 task force.

The initial project produced by the task force was accepted by ObjectWeb Board of Directors on December 5, 2005 and presented to the community at ObjectWebCon'06 on February 1, 2006.

Of course, this initial project called for some fine-tuning. In the following months, we tested it on over twenty companies from four continents and we gathered valuable feedback. We were in planning mode; we had to switch to execution mode.

Nothing will happen without the active participation of the Object Web community. Indeed, we have been working by ourselves for long enough and it was time to involve the community in the project. We needed the community to check and challenge the project we had drafted and to make the real decisions. We also needed the community to commit resources and to turn the new consortium into reality.

With this in mind, we were glad to welcome twenty attendees at the ObjectWeb V2 Inaugural Workshop to discuss key issues such as membership structure, fees, rights and duties, legal structure, IPR policy, consortium governance and activities, etc. Due to the short notice, members from Brazil, China, USA, Germany, Austria and the UK were unable to attend, which meant there was a large French contingent. We must do better next time!

Those who were able to make it to Château des Mesnuls were certainly not disappointed. Great weather, great food and great company; the stage was set for a productive meeting. And indeed, it met everybody’s expectations.

On Monday evening it didn’t take more than just a round of cocktails to get the first ObjectWeb V2 members on board and have them sign our Memorandum of Understanding. And the morning after, we got news of another MoU which arrived by fax all the way from Brazil; taking into account the MoU we electronically received from the US, we ended the workshop with 12 MoU. So here are (in alphabetical order) the magnificent twelve: Bull, eBM Websourcing, Edifixio, Engineering, eXo Platform, Experlog, France Telecom, Funambol, INRIA, Mandriva, Serpro and Thales. Now the list is just waiting to grow into something big.

After a good night’s sleep it was time to get to work. The agenda spanned most of the ObjectWeb V2 task force’s activity.

Session One: Membership

We decided on three categories of members: Large Organizations (LORGs), Small and Medium-Sized Organizations (SMORGs) - as defined by the European Commission - and Individuals, and on three membership classes: Strategic Members, Corporate Members, Individual Members. Financial fees were set to €3000 for SMORGs and €30,000 (with the possibility to increase to €50,000 depending on budget requirements) for LORGs, and no charge for Individuals.

Strategic Members are deemed strategic in as much as they consider ObjectWeb to be strategic for their own development and thus want to provide the consortium with the resources to maintain an independent organization. They commit to three years and besides their financial contribution, they appoint two full-time personnel for the Management Office. To make sure the consortium does not ostracize small but valiant companies, we decided that SMORGs may become Strategic Members through cooptation on the basis of their technical contribution. The current conditions for ObjectWeb V2 membership are on this page.

Session Two: Governance

This session dealt with the governance structure, the legal status of the consortium and its IPR policy. The overall governance structure, including the Board off Directors, the Councils, the Management Office, and the Management Teams for Projects, Initiatives and Local Chapters being endorsed by all attendees, the really tough discussion was on the IPR policy and the Legal Status of the organization.

IPR policy: the three key principles, i.e; use of existing licenses, revocable non-assertion and dual licensing were well supported but the inbound-outbound licensing mechanism was perceived as complex and must be reworked.

Legal Status: we need a legal vehicle which is both international and easy to manage so we decided to register an association with a legal status in France for efficiency reasons as it is technically international, easy to manage by our French current lawyers and simple to understand by lawyers from other countries; however, we will evaluate the feasibility to headquarter in Brussels to make a truly international organization.

Session Three: Activities

We had a sturdy discussion about the scope of the consortium: Should the consortium remain focused on runtime middleware or should it extend its scope to other segments such as development tools, as raised during talks with open source IDE projects? We decided that ObjectWeb should maintain its focus on middleware, albeit with loose definition of middleware, i.e. including tools for development, deployment and management of distributed applications. ObjectWeb however can leverage its expertise to foster or incubate third-party consortiums in other software areas.

In this session, we also decided on which Initiatives we will work first. Six Initiatives are to be carried out or launched at the onset of ObjectWeb V2: ESBi/SOA Initiative, Telco Systems and Services Initiative, E-government Initiative, Business Intelligence Initiative, Embedded Runtime Platform Initiative, Onessi Initiative (an initiative supporting the NESSI European Program). Another four initiatives are in the works on segments such as Enterprise content management, E-Learning, Collaboration Platforms and Security.

Session Four: Roadmap

This session was devoted to the what-next? and can-it-fly? questions. We examined the budget: it takes more or less €1.5 million annually to run the consortium. However, given that members’ in-kind contributions (both in staff and expenses) may cover up to 50% of budget, we need to sign 25 members at €30K to make it fly. We have some flexibility here and we can always adjust the scope of the organization to the available budget.

So now, on our to-do list we have the following priorities: Update bylaws following workshop decisions (done), Sort out legal aspects (status, HQ location), Secure commitment on resources (staffing Councils and MO), Recruit more members to cover budget, Launch Initiatives and Local Chapters.

As we leap forward in implementing ObjectWeb V2, we will keep in mind the final recommendations issued by the Inaugural Workshop attendees: beware of drifting from a technical meritocracy community to a full business oriented community and be aware that representation of the academic and research world is key in maintaining the influx of new, innovative software into ObjectWeb V2.

Time for Action

If you want to take part in ObjectWeb V2, the first step is to subscribe to the owv2 AT objectweb.org mailing list which can be reached directly at http://v2.objectweb.org and, please, feel free to download the MoU from here and send it back by mail, completed and signed, to :

or by fax to +33(0)476615363.

Task Force and Contacts

Cedric THOMAS, ObjectWeb V2 Task Force Lead

cedric.thomas AT objectweb.org

Jean-Pierre LAISNÉ, Chairman

jean-pierre.laisne AT bull.net

François LETELLIER, ObjectWeb Executive Director

francois.letellier AT objectweb.org