ObjectWeb Newsletter - Issue #1

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Hello dear subscriber,

this is the first issue of ObjectWeb's newsletter.

You receive it as a member of ObjectWeb newsletter mailing-list.

An HTML version of this newsletter is available at
http://www.objectweb.org/newsletter1.html.

Enjoy !



In this issue :

* Communication and Community
* Headlines
  - ObjectWeb Welcomes Red Hat
  - JOnAS Development Takes Off ! (version 3.2 released)
  - ObjectWeb Expands Middleware Offerings with Speedo
* Focus - Letter From Christophe Ney to Greg Stein About Geronimo
* Hot Stuff
  - Happy Birthday, Ishmael
  - Latest Releases
  - Coming Up - Events Where ObjectWeb Will Have a Booth or a Speaker
* Community
  - People (as of Aug 31)
  - Web Stats (August '03)
* How-to...
  - ...Become a Member
  - ...Get Involved
  - ...Give Feedback
  - ...Subscribe/Unsubscribe to the Newsletter



Communication and Community
---------------------------

It's been a hot summer for ObjectWeb... Quite a lot of major events happened.
Red Hat joined the consortium. JOnAS released two versions in one month. As a
non-profit organization, INRIA applied for a Sun scholarship to fund JOnAS 
J2EE
certification. Apache announced Geronimo and got in touch with ObjectWeb to
initiate collaboration. 10+ prominent experts involved in ObjectWeb talked 
at the
ICAR summer school. Our web infrastructure served more than a million hits a
month and 500+ people are involved in fifty projects.

There's a lot of information to circulate around and this will keep 
increasing in
the coming months. Our new web site has been redesigned to address a wider
public, ranging from open-source old-timers to computer newbies. All players 
of
the community are targeted: developers, users, and also researchers and 
decision-
makers. A second phase of site design improvement is undertaken. Faster and
redundant hardware will soon replace the existing servers to ensure maximum
availability. Marketing and communication have been improved to increase
diffusion of important information through press releases, online anouncements
and community tools including... this newsletter.

Lots of things have been done but nothing compared to the tremoundous job
developpers are doing. ObjectWeb's success is theirs. So please keep on the 
good
work, pass-on the good news, bring friends in and get involved in the
discussions. Because communication is essential to the community !

- François Letellier (mailto:francois.letellier@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) for the 
Executive
Committee



Headlines
---------

ObjectWeb Welcomes Red Hat

* ObjectWeb announced on August 5th, 2003 at Linux World San Francisco that 
Red
Hat has joined the consortium.
* "Both partners have already demonstrated their ability to provide 
industrial-
grade Open Source platforms. Red Hat is committed to contribute to ObjectWeb's
component code base, which will contribute significantly to the global
sustainability of ObjectWebs community effort."
* See: http://www.objectweb.org/phorum/read.php?f=29&i=89&t=89


JOnAS Development Takes off ! (version 3.2 released)

* ObjectWeb announced the second major upgrade of JOnAS in less than two 
months.
* "This new release marks a significant stage in the development of 
ObjectWeb's
Open Source application server. The new release, which is the second major
upgrade of JOnAS in less than two months, enriches the platform with enhanced
security features, improved facilities for deployment, access to legacy
databases, and complete independence with respect to communication 
interfaces."
* See: http://www.objectweb.org/phorum/read.php?f=29&i=76&t=76


ObjectWeb Expands Middleware Offerings with Speedo

* ObjectWeb announced Speedo, an Open Source implementation of JDO.
* "Speedo is a JDO personality of the ObjectWeb Open Source persistence
framework. It allows persistent objects to be mapped to any type of data 
stores
(relational or object databases, files, LDAP directories, etc)."
* See: http://www.objectweb.org/phorum/read.php?f=29&i=75&t=75

* For press coverage see: http://www.objectweb.org/phorum/list.php?f=24



Focus - Letter From Christophe Ney to Greg Stein About Geronimo
---------------------------------------------------------------

Following Apache Software Foundation (ASF) annoucement of the incubation of 
the
"Geronimo" J2EE-container project, Christophe Ney, on behalf of the 
consortium,
sent a letter to ASF Chairman Greg Stein to propose cooperation between the 
two
non-profit organizations.

Here is an excerpt of this letter:

"Apache and the ASF are recognized references in the world of open-source
software, and we really are honored to have the opportunity to find synergies
between your community and ours.

The announcement of the Geronimo project came at a very special moment for us,
right when Red Hat unveiled their strategic decision of getting involved into
ObjectWeb and shipping JOnAS in future releases of their Enterprise 
distribution.
We also were looking into getting the J2EE compatibility certification and 
just
approached Sun on this matter. Jonathan Schwartz from Sun said, "If 
ObjectWeb is
just Apache with a different face, we'd love to work with them". As for us, we
strongly believe that Apache and ObjectWeb share the same goals and the 
same non-
profit policy, and we'd love to make our two communities work together.

We are delighted to see another open-source J2EE initiative start up. This 
shows
that the market is now ready for open-source J2EE application servers.
Nevertheless, ObjectWeb has a wider scope than JOnAS just like Apache extends
well beyond Geronimo. Beside the project level, we believe that we now have a
unique opportunity of tightening the relations between our two organizations
through common work and common thinking. "

See:
* From G.Stein to the JOnAS team:
http://www.objectweb.org/wws/arc/jonas/2003-08/msg00046.html
* From C.Ney to G.Stein:
http://www.objectweb.org/wws/arc/community/2003-09/msg00002.html
* From JB.Stefani to B.Behlendorf:
http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?listName=geronimo-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&msgNo=2960 

* ObjectWeb Position on JSPA and Open Source (archive):
http://www.objectweb.org/phorum/read.php?f=18&i=2&t=2


Hot Stuff
---------

Happy Birthday, Ishmael

This month (September 2003) it is right one year ago that in reaction to a
posting in the jonas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx mailing list
(http://www.objectweb.org/wws/arc/jonas/2002-09/msg00151.html), authored by 
long-
lasting JOnAS-user Markus Karg (mailto:markus-karg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx), two
projects started that were related to JCP.org's JSR 88 (namely "J2EE 
Deployment
API"): "The J2EE Deployment Toolkit", lead by Markus Karg (hosted on
SourceForge), and "Ishmael", lead by Dean Jennings and Tim Holloway (hosted on
ObjectWeb). One year of long discussions and hard work. Time to take a 
snapshot
of what the status of these projects is about and to present first results.
Actually both projects are still in an early alpha level, but nevertheless, 
even
with having had the first public alphas of both projects beeing just a few 
weeks
ago, though it is possible to use the couple of JOnAS-3-2 plus Ishmael plus 
J2EE
Deployment Toolkit to deploy the e. g. sb.jar from JOnAS examples into a 
running
JOnAS server! Sure this is not a big step for mankind, but it shows that 
there is
work in progress and that these projects are on the right way. Chances are 
good
to see final releases before the end of 2003. Stay tuned. If you want to 
support
these projects, or just want to see the current status, you can go here:

* Ishmael: http://ishmael.forge.objectweb.org/
* J2EE Deployment Toolkit: http://sourceforge.net/projects/earsetup/

- Markus Karg, Project Leader of J2EE Deployment Toolkit


Latest Releases

* Aug 27 - Bonita beta 4 first release
* Aug 26 - C-JDBC 1.0beta9 maintenance release
* Aug 25 - RUBiS 1.4.1 maintenance release
* Aug 25 - Enhydra Director 5.1RC1 w/ Apache, iPlanet, s390 binaries and IIS-
caching
* Aug 20 - RUBBoS and TPC-W available for download on JMOB
* Aug 20 - JOnAS 3.2.2 milestone build
* Aug 11 - Enhydra JaWE 1.1 released with contribution from Abacus
* Aug 7 - JORAM 3.6 connects J2ME devices
* Aug 6 - JOTM 1.4.3 maintenance release
* More: http://www.objectweb.org/phorum/list.php?f=29


Coming Up - Events Where ObjectWeb Will Have a Booth or a Speaker

* September 25,26: ObjectWeb Architecture Meeting Grenoble, France (with 
the much
expected participation of Red Hat)
* September 30: LogOn Web Day Frankfurt, Germany
* October 7: LogOn Web Day Brussels, Belgium
* October 16: LogOn Web Day Paris, France
* October 14-16: International IT Conferences & Expos (WowGao) Toronto, Canada
* October 26-30: OOPSLA 2003 Workshop Anaheim, California, USA
* October 27-29: LinuxWorld Frankfurt, Germany
* October 30: LogOn Web Day Milan, Italy
* November 20,21: Third ObjectWeb Consortium Conference, Paris, France
* More: http://www.objectweb.org/phorum/list.php?f=28



Community
---------

People (as of Aug 31)

* 18 legal entity members
* 375 individual members or applicants
* 1992 mailing lists users
* 461 accounts in the Forge / 123 commiters
* 80+ persons in the Chinese mailing lists and 25+ working on translation


Web Stats (August '03)

* 22165 hits on ObjectWeb's home page
* 18647 hits on Enhydra's home page
* 49 projects in the Forge
* 18133 downloads from the Forge
* More stats (registered members only):
http://myobjectweb.objectweb.org/communityData.php



How-to...
---------

...Become a Member

You can become a member of the ObjectWeb consortium, either as an individual 
or
as a legal entity. Use the online registration wizzard on the web site. 
Fill the
forms in, print the agreement and send two signed copies to ObjectWeb along 
with
the payment (free for individuals). Ask support from the Executive Committee
should you need any assistance.
* Go to: http://consortium.objectweb.org/registration.html


...Get Involved

Anybody can subscribe to the community@xxxxxxxxxxxxx mailing-list to discuss 
on
general matters. If you want to get involved in a project, you can send a 
mail to
the corresponding mailing-list (<project name>@objectweb.org). You also can
create yourself an account in the Forge and ask the project owners to grant 
you
write permissions.
* Go to: http://forge.objectweb.org/account/register.php


...Give Feedback

Gathering information in an open-source community is a hard task. You can 
help us
in many ways: giving feedback, use cases, information on OW integrators,
appearances in the media, hot news and more.
* Go to: http://consortium.objectweb.org/gather.html


...Subscribe/Unsubscribe to the Newsletter

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also can subscribe online on ObjectWeb's home page. To unsubscribe,
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