The codeCauldron Community

The Cauldron community is a directed open source community established in May 2006.

What is the codeCauldron Vision?

As a community we are interested in addressing the fundamental problems associated with designing the next generation of massively distributed adaptive system. Considerations include:

• How does one decouple business processes, and associated computational state, from an underlying hardware substrate so completely that services survive the passing of many generations of machines or virtual machines?
• How do we go about building such self-repairing, self-scaling, self-optimising, evolvable systems?

Cauldron, rather than starting with a particular architectural bias or allegiance, instead looks for guidance from the many complex adaptive systems with which we interact with on a daily basis. Some 20+ years of academic research into biological and more generally Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), provide us with the foundations / context for our community endevours.

What are the goals of Cauldron community?

codeCauldron has two fundamental goals:

1. To build a vibrant community capable of addressing the emerging opportunities presented by the desire of many businesses to move beyond the limitations imposed by traditional brittle stove-piped application server, Grid and ESB technologies, and
2. To create a "shared success, shared reward" community model, within which active community members have the opportunity to share in any financial value built by the community. In this manner Cauldron hopes to correct some of the recent imbalance seen in the open source movement.

What is codeCauldron's attitude to Industry Standards?

Quite simply, Cauldron believe it is important to build effective systems while adhering to industry standards that contribute towards our objectives. Cauldron will fully leverage and contribute to these. At present we suggest that the relevant standards comprise of OSGi Alliance, SCA and Jini, each with its own significant strengths, and each complementary and contributing towards our goal.

So how is codeCauldron different from other open source communities?

As a directed community, codeCauldron is not a "sand box" for a wide range of often unrelated projects. Rather, the Cauldron community members share the common goal of developing advanced component centric enterprise-class or pervasive compute solutions that leverage both recovery oriented and adaptive design principles.

Cauldron projects are based upon Newton, a distributed services framework contributed by Paremus (http://www.paremus.com). In addition to building systems and services using Newton, Cauldron members may extend and enrich Newton by providing new framework components, and by exploring new adaption, recovery and orchestration techniques. In this way, Cauldron members may actively contribute towards the community's future direction and evolution on the framework.

codeCauldron and Developers?

Cauldron community members embrace new ideas, especially those from other disciplines, and are prepared to rethink and re-learn principles based upon ongoing experience.

Why should open source developers join codeCauldron?

For all the usual benefits of being a member of a dynamic, open source community advancing the state-of-the-art in adaptive, distributed systems. Developers interested in Jini, OSGi and JXTA, and the fusion of these technologies, should find participation a particularly rewarding experience. Beyond that, codeCauldron is pioneering a "shared success, shared reward" model for community members through its affiliation with the Paremus Enterprise Component Marketplace. This marketplace offers codeCauldron community members an optional commercial distribution channel to the enterprise market for their components.

How do I propose a new Cauldron project?

New project proposals should be submitted to wizards@cauldron.codeCauldron.org New project proposals are reviewed by a group of principle engineers selected from currently active Cauldron projects. Proposals are reviewed with respect to adherences to fundamental design philosophies, and interoperability within the community's component software ecosystem.

A project does not need to start with an existing code base. However, proposers need to be able to articulate:

1. How the proposed project enriches the current communities software ecosystem. This includes whether the project competes with other efforts within the community. As long a driving motivation is to increase the variety and capabilities of the collective, or improve the fitness in a particular component niche within the software environment, competition is good.
2. Demonstrate how the design of the proposed system complies with the adaptability and evolvability requirements of the community framework.
3. Have, at least initially considered the appropriate licensing approach, and if commercially focused, the target market for the proposed functionality.

Some things to consider before suggesting a project include:

• Architecture documentation, ready for a static site or Confluence
• A broad plan of action, and associated roadmap.
• An appreciation of the sub-system dependencies that you have on the rest of the community, and help required from community members.

Usually, one of the project reviewers will contact you, or other members of your team, to discuss the proposal in detail.

How do I go about contributing to existing Cauldron projects?

Individuals may submit suggested enhancements and bug fixes to existing projects via the named principle engineers for each project. Principle engineers are responsible for assessing the relevance of the bug-fix or the proposed functionality. At the principle engineer's discretion, a member may be invited to become a full committer to a project, and at this point in effect, part of the core project team. A new committer, is expected to show strong understanding of the community and project aims and architectural approaches, and promote the aims of the community.

Existing projects must be actively maintained to remain within the community. A dormant project will be archived and removed from the community unless it is adopted by a new surrogate project team.

codeCauldron and relationship to Paremus?

Cauldron aims to be a beaurcracy light community! Community direction is managed by the Cauldron council. The council is currently run by Paremus and chaired by Paremus CTO, Richard Nicholson. As the community evolves, appropriate minimal management and governance structures will be formulated. Principle engineers for each community project, are responsible for the control and the direction of their projects.

Isn't codeCauldron just a venue for Paremus open source products?

No. While the distributed service framework (Newton) developed and contributed by Paremus is the initial project on codeCauldron, the objective is to seed the community with the foundation for deploying codeCauldron enterprise components. Other community members, individuals or companies, are encouraged to assist in the development of new releases of Newton but, more importantly, also develop a wide range of new technology and business components that enrich the overall value of the framework to enterprise users.

Is codeCauldron a "captive" OSS community for Paremus?

While Paremus is providing the initial resources to launch the community, contributing its distributed service framework as the foundation project (Newton) and establishing the initial direction for codeCauldron, the plan is for non-Paremus community members to actively participate in guiding the community activity.

I have my Staff and Long Cloak, how do I join the council

By invitation only. In the course of time, community members that actively drive community interests will be invited to join the council.

So what is this commercial angle?

The open source movement was initially a gift-based community. Open source provided "freedom"; an alternative to proprietary lock-in. Individuals or companies, donated resource to these communities in acknowledgment of the derived benefits, or simply because they supported the fundamental principle of "freedom to choose".

In stark contrast, today's open source is predominantly viewed in terms of commercial opportunity. Open source communities are a source of free creativity, development and testing resource, and a mechanism for providing effective market validation. Meanwhile, a growing proportion of software users view "open source" as effectively free, with no commitment back to the communities that developed the solutions upon which their business depends. In many cases, the principled efforts of open source community members, and their gifts of time and expertise, are effectively translated into third-party financial profit.

Which open sources license should Cauldron projects use?

Projects are free to choose their own license model. This may be an open Apache / BSD type license, GPL or a dual license GPL / commercial license.

How would a project pursue a commercial channel to market?

The Cauldron project team may choose to release their product via the Paremus Enterprise Component Market, or may chose to take a component directly to market themselves. The only obligation being to honor all commercial and community licenses upon which the component depends.

What is the Paremus Enterprise Component Market?

The Paremus Enterprise Component Market (ECM) is a commercial channel via which Cauldron developers may take their functionality to market.

Admission to the Paremus ECM is at the sole discretion of Paremus. If a Cauldron project team wish to be considered, the project team and Paremus management review the commercial applicability of the project. The parties will also agree the component pricing model, the related support and ongoing developement commitments. Prior to the project being accepted by Paremus, the team must also agree an internal revenue distribution model for both existing and future members of the project.

Hence individuals that consistently contribute towards established, commercially active, Cauldron projects, will therefore be provided with the opportunity to derive financial compensation.

Finally, before a component can be released into the commercial market place, the component is extensively/destructively tested and certified in the Paremus Enterprise component framework test centre.

What options are there regarding revenue generated by the Paremus ECM?

Revenue generated from the Paremus ECM and returned to the community will be distributed across the team members of the individual projects in the manner agreed by the team. Individuals may choose to keep their percentage, or donate it to one of the community designated charities.

Relationship and attitude towards other open source communities?

How do you view other, more traditional open source communities?

We view traditional open source communities as valuable partners, and encourage Cauldron members to contribute to projects that are consistent with our philosophy. It is the intention that fixes and enhancements made by the Cauldron community to enabler technologies will be donated back to source communities, for consideration by those communities.

The following open source projects provide important foundations upon which our community rests.

• The OSGi component framework provides the fundamental mechanism for code deployment, and the open source efforts including Knoplerfish supported by Makewave, OSCAR supported by ObjectWeb, the related Apache project Felix, and the Eclipse project Equinox are commended.
• Jini and JXTA, both developed by Sun Microsystems, provide the fundamentals for our distributed systems behaviors, and the importance of the support given to these technologies by their respective open source communities cannot be overstated.