rt.concierge/proposal.html

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<title>Concierge</title>
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	<p>
		The Concierge project is a proposed open source project under the <a
			href="http://www.eclipse.org/projects/project_summary.php?projectid=rt">RT
			Project</a>.
	</p>

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	<p>
		This proposal is in the Project Proposal Phase (as defined in the
		Eclipse Development Process) and is written to declare its intent and
		scope. We solicit additional participation and input from the Eclipse
		community. Please send all feedback to the <a
			href="http://www.eclipse.org/forums/eclipse.proposals">Eclipse
			Proposals</a> Forum.
	</p>

	<h2>Background</h2>

	<p>Mobile and embedded devices have seen a tremendous growth in
		adoption in the last years and are by now pervasively used. Both
		user-facing devices (smart phones, tablets) as well as traditional M2M
		applications such as sensing platforms or home automation gateways
		require that software deployed to these devices can effectively
		managed. OSGi and its ability of composing applications out of
		software modules has been an important technology in this domain and
		has its roots in this market. However, over time, OSGi implementations
		have become more focused on machines with plentiful resources,
		developed a large footprint, and became hard to embed into systems.</p>

	<h2>Scope</h2>

	<p>The scope of the Eclipse Concierge project is to remain
		small-footprint and optimized for embedded devices while bringing the
		framework to compliance with the current OSGi core specifications,
		currently R5.</p>

	<h2>Description</h2>

	<p>Concierge is a small-footprint implementation of the OSGi
		Core Specifications R3 standard optimized for mobile and embedded
		devices. </p>
		
	<p>The following are the goals and plans for the Concierge project:</p>

	<ul>
		<li>Bringing the framework to compliance with the current OSGi
			core R5 specifications by aggressively focusing on the new and
			future-proof features such as the generic requirement/capability
			model and thereby keeping the footprint small. The target is in the
			order of 300-400 kB Jar file size. Furthermore, the framework should
			not only run on current and upcoming Java embedded profiles (e.g.,
			Java 8 compact profile) but it should also be possible to compile the
			code with the JSR-14 target to run it on legacy Java 1.4 VMs like CDC
			1.1.</li>
		<li>Keeping the source code compact and readable so that
			interested people have a realistic chance of understanding the
			internals of an OSGi framework.</li>
		<li>Exploring new ways of integrating OSGi into mobile and
			embedded system stacks.</li>
		<li>Being a sandbox for experimental features and optimizations
			for existing OSGi features that can be consumed by the Equinox
			project.</li>
		<li>Providing a platform for exploratory research on how to bring
			the Java VM and the OSGi layer closer together to improve runtime
			performance.</li>
	</ul>

	<p>The following are the non-goals:</p>

	<ul>
		<li>It is not a goal to run the Eclipse IDE on Concierge any time
			soon.</li>
	</ul>


	<h2>Why Eclipse?</h2>

	<p>Eclipse has for a long time been a home for OSGi (the Equinox
		framework implementation) and OSGi tooling (PDE, etc.). Even though
		the Eclipse Foundation already has an OSGi framework implementation in
		Equinox, we think that there is space for a new targeted effort around
		mobile and embedded systems and we hope that the innovations created
		through the Concierge project can help to improve Equinox.</p>


	<h2>Relationship with Eclipse Projects</h2>

	<p>Concierge is an alternative implementation to Equinox of the
		OSGi core framework. However, it has a distinct and different focus in
		that it is targeted at highly constrained environments. Concierge and
		Equinox will discuss possible collaborations and convergence in the
		future. Furthermore, due to its smaller footprint and simpler
		structure Concierge can serve as the sandbox for experimental work on
		the OSGi core which can later be adopted by Equinox.</p>


	<h2>Initial Contribution</h2>

	<p>The initial contribution would be the framework portion of the
		code from the Concierge Sourceforge project
		(http://concierge.sourceforge.net) by ETH Zurich. It could possibly
		also include existing example code and unit tests.</p>


	<h2>Legal Issues</h2>

	<p>ETH Zurich will confirm to the Eclipse Foundation in writing
		that they will not make any claims to the name "Concierge" in
		connection to the software. There are no known legal issues.</p>

	<p>Pending approval of the Eclipse Foundation Board, Concierge will
		be dual licensed under Eclipse Public License 1.0 (EPL) and Eclipse
		Distribution License 1.0 (BSD/EDL).</p>

	<h2>Committers</h2>

	<p>The following individuals are proposed as initial committers to
		the project:</p>

	<dl>
		<dt>Jan S. Rellermeyer, IBM Research (lead)</dt>
		<dd>Jan is a committer on the ECF project where he has made
			significant contributions over many years. He is also the author of
			the Concierge Sourceforge project. Furthermore, Jan is the creator
			and main contributor of the R-OSGi and jSLP project at Sourceforge.</dd>
		<dt>Tim Verbelen, Ghent University</dt>
		<dd>Tim will be working on the better integration of OSGi into
			the Android software stack and on applications of OSGi for augmented
			reality. He will likely get help from PhD students who have recently
			joined his research group.</dd>
	</dl>

	<p>We welcome additional committers and contributions.</p>


	<h2>Mentors</h2>

	<p>The following Architecture Council members will mentor this
		project:</p>

	<ul>
		<li>John Duimovich, IBM</li>
		<li>Benjamin Cab&eacute;, Sierra Wireless</li>
	</ul>

	<h2>Interested Parties</h2>


	<p>The following individuals, organisations, companies and projects
		have expressed interest in this project:</p>

	<ul>
		<li>Hans Kamutzki, MicroDoc GmbH</li>
		<li>Werner Keil, Eclipse UOMo Project lead</li>
		<li>Marco Carrer, Eurotech</li>
	</ul>

	<h2>Project Scheduling</h2>

	<p>The Concierge project intends to make first code contributions
		by July 2013 and start builds to be available shortly after that.</p>

	<h2>Changes to this Document</h2>

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<table>
	<tr>
		<th>Date</th>
		<th>Change</th>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>3-July-2013</td>
		<td>Clarification regarding Java 1.4 and addition of interested parties.</td>
	</tr>
</table>


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