[Joining OW2] -> [Membership Benefits]

Membership Benefits

Why join OW2?

OW2 is the only non-profit open source organization gathering renown industry leaders, academics and individuals, focusing entirely on promoting open source middleware software.

As a market-aware organization, OW2 coordinates technology projects and facilitates their implementation by systems integrators and end-users through usage-oriented integration frameworks and platforms provided by market-driven initiatives.

A typical global open source organization, OW2 aims at fostering grassroots communities across all continents through geographically-rooted organizations.

OW2 brings a number of unique benefits to software developers, systems integrators and end-users.

OW2 for software developers and systems integrators

For companies in the IT sector, whether their strategy is full open source or not, OW2 is a catalyst for growth:

• Time-to-Market: OW2 helps reduce development time by fostering R&D sharing between members, free bug fixing by the community and by providing a pool of free components to build new solutions or enhance existing software
• Business Opportunities: The OW2 ecosystem allows members to develop their market by providing them access to a network of potential customers and to a pool of expertise in all geographies and verticals
• Technical Guidance: The common architectural vision developed by OW2 helps developers make the right decisions and provides them with a common integration framework for the interoperability of members' technologies and their partners' offerings.

OW2 for end-user organizations

OW2 provides end-users with both a comprehensive pool of reliable open source software and a business ecosystem which helps them implement their open source strategies by significantly reducing their risks:

• Reduced Technology Risk: OW2 offers end-users the technology quality of open-source development and debugging process
• Reduced Legal Risk: OW2 offers end-users a legal expertise and environment for code which can be freely re-used, adapted and distributed
• Reduced Market Risk: OW2 guarantees end-users investment protection as projects are endorsed by a strong market follow-up

Members guarantee OW2 Consortium's independence

The open source community contributes direct resources (annual membership fees) and indirect resources such as full-time personnel and travel expenses to support the organization's objectives. Through their dues, members pay to set-up and maintain an independent organization and to provide it with the resources to allow it to implement its own strategy.

In return for their commitment, members are given rights in the governance of the organization and the definition of its strategy. The OW2 governance model is designed to comply with the key original founding principles of ObjectWeb: Openness, Fairness, Trust, Transparency, and Independence.

Growth in collected fees through an increase in membership allows the organization to implement its strategy, to sponsor technology research projects and to launch ecosystem growth initiatives.