A look at the open source OW2 Consortium

During the OSCAMP event in Beijing, I had a chance to talk to Cedric Thomas, the CEO of OW2 open source organization. Here's an extract of our conversation:

1. Can you tell me about the origins of the OW2 Consortium? We hear OW2 is the result of a merger between OrientWare and ObjectWeb.
In 2002, a joint open source community project between Bull, France Telecom and INRIA was launched under the name ObjectWeb, with an initial life span of three years. In the meantime, in 2004, a group of world-class Chinese universities launched OrientWare, a comparable project in China. Both projects focused on developing open source middleware.

ObjectWeb has quickly grown into an international community and, in 2005, when the question of an independent financial model arose, the sponsors, INRIA, Bull and France Telecom, called me in to help define the future organization ad draft its development plan. This plan was broadly debated with the community throughout 2006, while I also implemented the transition from the old to the new organization. That year we had extensive discussions with our friends at OrientWare and it became obvious that a merge was the best way to create a truly global community.

The new organization, OW2, was launched in January 2007 as a non-profit organization. But its code base and its community goes back to the early 2000.

2. And what about you? Would please give a brief introduction about you, and discuss why you created OW2?
Personally, I have been a strategy consultant for the IT industry for over 25 years. I've written business plans for open source software vendors, and I had directly helped launch finance two open source startups. It is probably because of this experience that INRIA, BULL and France Telecom asked me to design the plan and help launch the new organization. And when, during 2006, as I was conducting the transition they asked me to run the new organization, and actually execute the plan I had designed it was of course an exciting challenge and a offer I could not refuse. So I gradually terminated my other assignments and today, I run OW2 as a full-time job. Running OW2 means to be permanently on the edge of technology, of business processes, of management, and of international relations. I think I am lucky to have one of the lost exciting jobs in the IT industry.

3. What are the main goals of the OW2 Consortium? What's the core value of OW2 for enterprise?
Our mission statement sums it up: "OW2 mission is to develop open source code middleware, and to foster a vibrant community and business ecosystem."

To our members, we provide three kinds of services:

- First, it is a reliable technical infrastructure delivering collaborative services to project teams, such as a forge for collaborative software development, bug trackers, wikis, downloads facilities, mailing lists, etc.

- Second, the consortium provides a mature and stable governance system which helps members mutualize their efforts, grants projects an open source legitimity and helps organize activities in a way that grows the social capital available to all.

- Third, the consortium provides marketing and communication support for developing projects' visibility and market awareness; as a result, members' market power is greater when participating in OW2 than individually.

4. With the success of the OW2 Consortium for open source projects, What's the philosophy behind it?
We concentrate on middleware. Our analysis is that there is a window of opportunity for a well structured community focusing on middleware. Modern computing systems are increasingly complex and middleware has become a strategic infrastructure component of modern information societies. We are convinced that open source and middleware go well together.

On one hand, it make sense for IT companies. They can cooperate on developing common middleware code, while at the same time compete in offering business solutions to end-users. Firms can share the same components and still develop different products and implement different solutions.

On the other, it make sense for end-users. Because the value of infrastructure software increases with usage (also known as “network effects”), product differentiation in this market tends to be less relevant, thus making a large single source more desirable than many smaller sources.

Whether you look at it from the vendor or the user point of view the economics makes sense.

5. What's the key milestone for OW2 in the next coming three years with a global open source community model?
First of all, we need to carry on building this organization. We want to build on what makes us unique and provide to the open source middleware world a reliable technical infrastructure, a trustable governance system and a market identity. It is still work in progress and we have a number of operational milestones which will tell us over the next year how well we have been doing.

Second, we want to reach critical mass through a single unified organization spanning Asia, Europe and Latin America. Technology is global and critical mass is paramount in a global market. In the next couple of years we need to significantly grow our membership in each of these three regions. We are not overlooking North America, but I think we will be.

Third, while we grow, we prepare for the next phase of our development plan and this includes strengthning our ecosystems through the development of market-oriented initiatives and the implementation of a global governance through local chapters. We are still largely a technology-focused community, but our Strategic Members are already experimenting with market initiatives and local chapters.

6. With the economic downturn, China is still growing faster than other country. What are your views of open source business opportunity in China?
My perception is that open source is growing faster in China than in any other country in the world. Having said that, I am still confused by the fact that many students still seem to think there is more future in proprietary software than open source software. I think that is because they envision working for foreign companies.

But this is where the economic environment will help open source. In a slow global economy, foreign proprietary software companies will look less attractive, whereas a still strong Chinese economy will generate its own software development. And I thrust that Chinese developers will quickly learn how open source allows them to achieve more, faster and better.

I think open source represents a unique opportunity for China to loosen its dependence on foreign proprietary software.

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Peter Cheng

Peter Cheng is a community strategist and open source evangelist, who is based in Beijing, China. In 2003, he initiated the Open Source University program to gather industry experts and help spread open source technology and culture to over 100 universities. In 2007, he organized the Open Source Camp in five Chinese cities, with the aim to enable the open source community to share and exchange ideas and to promote the technology in China. Peter currently runs TargetSource Tech, a company he founded to provide consulting services on enterprise open source software.