IMPORTANT INFORMATION - Transition from ObjectWeb to OW2

2006-12-21T08:29:59Z

IMPORTANT INFORMATION ENCLOSED PLEASE READ CAREFULLY

Dear ObjectWeb members and partners,

ObjectWeb is about to undergo the biggest evolution since its foundation as
a consortium in 2002 by Bull, France Telecom and INRIA.

* ObjectWeb: Success and Evolution

The ObjectWeb story started somewhere around Grenoble in the Alp
mountains in the late 90's and now spans the whole planet with active
participation of members from several European countries to China to the
United States to Brazil. Over the last 5 years, our community experienced
tremendous growth, now counting over 70 corporate members, over 700
committers, thousands of individual members and contributors from many
countries in all continents. Our middleware code base counts over a hundred
projects for a total of tens of million lines of open source code.

This phase of growth brought new opportunities and new challenges. In order
to better address them, the Board of Directors decided in early 2005 to start
a task force with the mission of evaluating possible scenarios and
implementing the most suitable of them. This mission code-named
ObjectWeb v2 has been successful due to major commitment of
ObjectWebs community. As a result, it was decided to make the transition
from the current organization, namely a consortium hosted by INRIA, to a full-
fledged, non-profit independent legal entity. This new entity, whose bylaws
have been approved by ObjectWeb's Board of Directors, will be incepted in
January 2007 under the French law as a non-profit association headquartered
in Brussels, Belgium.

* Creation of OW2: a Nonprofit Legal Entity

The new organization is registered under the name OW2 Consortium or OW2
for short. This new name is the result of ObjectWeb and OrientWare joining
their forces to build a global and powerful
alliance. After extensive consultation
of the community, its rules of operation have been defined on the following
principles:

- enhanced commitment from the members through three levels of membership:
Strategic, Corporate and Individual
- deliberate market awareness with the underlying rationale to bridge the gap
between enterprise developers and users
- a refined governance model promoting increased participation from the
community, with three councils addressing technology, ecosystem
development and operations
- possibilities to create local chapters so as to facilitate international
development in a decentralized way

* In Practice: What to Expect, What Actions to Take

The ObjectWeb consortium agreement is ending on December 31, 2006. OW2
Consortium is starting on January 1, 2007. Current members are warmly invited
to join OW2 but memberships will not be automatically transferred. For this
reason, it is very important that ObjectWeb members take the necessary actions
to join the OW2 Consortium. Strategic and corporate members joining OW2 in
the first quarter of year 2007, be them former
ObjectWeb members or not, will be
deemed Co-Founders of the association.

Joining OW2 will most likely require the
involvement of your legal department. All
necessary legal documents will be available online shortly and additional
information is available on request. As CEO of the association, Cedric Thomas
will lead the operations and be your main contact
for all practical information.

No personal information will be transferred from ObjectWeb to OW2 without the
explicit consent of the user. A simplified
procedure will be put in place so that
registered members and users of the ObjectWeb
online facility can opt-in to have
their personal information transferred to the
association. Details are to be sent on
all ObjectWeb mailing lists shortly.

From now on, new membership and new project submission will no longer be
accepted by ObjectWeb. However in the short term the ObjectWeb web site and
Forge will be kept up and running, so project and
community activities be carried
on without interruption.

We want to thank you all for having made OW2 Consortium possible. We are
now counting on you to make it an even better
place for great projects. We invite
you all, developers, researchers, open source
enthusiasts from over the world, to
participate in this new and exciting endeavor.
Last but not least, we would like to
take advantage of this message to present you our most sincere season's
greetings and wish you the best for year 2007. And long live OW2!

With warmest regards,

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

Jean Pierre Laisné ObjectWeb Chairman
François Letellier ObjectWeb Executive Director

François LETELLIER
INRIA Rhône-Alpes - ObjectWeb Project Director
email: francois.letellier at inria.fr - cell: +33
(0)6 84 64 00 24 - Skype: francois.letellier
blog: http://os3g.blogspot.com/

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IMPORTANT INFORMATION - Transition from ObjectWeb to OW2