OSGi Community Event 2016 Presentation by Milen Dyankov (Liferay) OSGi has evolved and matured beyond recognition over the last few years. It’s now easier than ever before, to build dynamic, modular Java applications to address the challenges imposed by ever growing and constantly changing business requirements. Despite that fact, OSGi seems to be far from receiving the appreciation it deserves. And if you are OSGi developer who now wanders “why should I care?”, let me remind you Thomas Edison’s famous quote “The value of an idea lies in the using of it”! Growing large community around given technology has proven to be an essential part of its success. In this talk I’d like to go over what OSGi community is (not) doing to attract “outsiders”. I’d also argue it can do much better than that. Based on observations and conversation from the last 2 years trying to advocate for OSGi among Java developers. I’ll try to position the technology it today’s reality of microservices, containers, clouds, DevOps, automation, Java 9, … and bring to your attention the perspective of an “outsider” together with all the presumptions, fallacies and promises it comes with. Finally I’d like to share some ideas about how to address those, promote relevant parts of OSGi and thus perhaps make it more attractive to Java developers!

1. OSGi
for outsiders
@MilenDyankov

2. 1 platform
over 100 apps
over 600 modules
over 2500 μServices

3. The opinions expressed
in this presentation are
those of the author,
and may not reflect in
any way those of the
institutions to which
he is affiliated!

4. 2000 201520142013201220112010200920082007200620052004200320022001 2016
R1
R2
R3
R4
R4.3
R5
R6R4.1
R4.2
OSGi specifications

5. 2000 201520142013201220112010200920082007200620052004200320022001 2016
R1
R2
R3
R4
R4.3
R5
R6R4.1
R4.2
In which OSGi release
Http Service was first specified ?

6. 2000 201520142013201220112010200920082007200620052004200320022001 2016
R1
R2
R3
R4
R4.3
R5
R6R4.1
R4.2
In which OSGi release
Http Service was first specified ?

7. 2004
source:
OSGi Pre Workshop
by Peter Kriens

8. 2004
source:
OSGi Pre Workshop
by Peter Kriens

9. 2004
source:
OSGi Pre Workshop
by Peter Kriens

10. 2004
source:
OSGi Pre Workshop
by Peter Kriens

11. 2004
source:
OSGi Tutorial
by Sven Haiges

12. source:
OSGi Tutorial
by Sven Haiges
2004

13. source:
OSGi – Feast Or Famine?
by Kirk Knoernschild
2010

14. source:
Technology Radar
by ThoughtWorks
2015

15. source:
Google Trends
2016

16. Why “outsiders” don’t see the
beauty of OSGi ?

17. Why “outsiders” don’t see the
beauty of OSGi ?
Assumption 1:
They are ignorants!

18. Why “outsiders” don’t see the
beauty of OSGi ?
Assumption 1:
They are ignorants!
Assumption 2:
They are idiots!

19. Why “outsiders” don’t see the
beauty of OSGi ?
Assumption 1:
They are ignorants!
Assumption 2:
They are idiots!
Assumption 3:
They are evil!
Credit for defining the above assumptions goes to Kathryn Schulz and her great TED talk ”On being wrong”

20. What “outsiders” think about
people favoring OSGi ?

21. What “outsiders” think about
people favoring OSGi ?
Assumption 1:
They are ignorants!
Assumption 2:
They are idiots!
Assumption 3:
They are evil!

22. Henri Tajfel
Kandinsky vs Klee

23. Too complex
Non standard build tools
Incompatible libraries
Steep learning curve
Awkward design
Reduced Complexity
Modular architecture
Dynamic Updates
Adaptive
Non Intrusive

24. Continued Influence Effect
… one learns "facts" about an event
that later turn out to be false or
unfounded, but the discredited
information continues to influence
reasoning and understanding even
after one has been corrected.

25. Continued Influence Effect
WARNING
It works both ways!

27. source:
“Developers about OSGi”
survey
2016

28. source:
“Developers about OSGi”
survey
2016

31. What are the main issues ?
Tooling !!!
● Environment - Workspaces, repositories,
plugins, templates, JPM4J, …
● Configuration - properties files (I mean seriously
it’s 2016)
● Build - BND, BNDTools, PDE, Tycho, Maven, …
● Runtime - Bndrun, Subsytems, Features, ...

32. What are the main issues ?
Documentation !!!
EnRoute is a light in the tunnel! But still
● Too academic approach
● Lots of old information
● No central place to explain the big picture
● Lots of internal fights (DS vs Blueprint vs ...)

33. What are the main issues ?
Strategies !!!
● Embedded vs Hosted
● Compile time vs Run time resolution
● How to handle 3rd
party non-OSGi JARs
● Crossing boundaries (AOP, Transactions, ...)

34. Dutchman’s
International
Attitude
“... we are small country! If we want to
do business with the rest of the world
we need to speak their languages.
We can’t expect them to learn Dutch!”

35. OSGi’s
Intercommunity
Attitude
We are small community! If we want to
trade with other communities we need to
understand their concerns.
We can’t expect them to
simply switch to OSGi!

36. Why should we care ?

37. Why should we care ?
I, Pencil
by Leonard Read
”Simple? Yet, not a single
person on the
face of this earth knows
how to make me.”

38. John:
Jerry:
A B
4h 3h
A B
1h 2h
= 3h
= 7h
Trading
vs
Manufacturing

39. John:
Jerry:
A B
4h 3h
A B
1h 2h
= 3h
= 7h
Trading
vs
Manufacturing
John:
Jerry:
B
3h 3h
A
1h 1h
= 2h
= 6hB
A

40. What goods we can trade ?
Baselining
What if we could export baselining
beyond OSGi (or even Java) ?

41. What goods we can trade ?
Resolver
What if we could improve Maven central
for everyone not just OSGi?

42. What goods we can trade ?
Service registry
What if we could use that for
discovering microservices and
containers and ... ?

43. What goods we can trade ?
Software Design
principles

44. https://12factor.net
Developers
need guidelines!

45. http://microprofile.io/
Specs
are boring
Frameworks
are cool!

46. http://start.spring.io
Developers
want it simple !

47. idea:
CoreOS + Android like
distributed operating
system
Developers
know software but
not infrastructure!

48. idea:
CoreOS + Android like
distributed operating
system
registry
● minimal operating system
● bundle/container management software
● distributed configuration / discovery
● treat the cluster as if it is single system
● cloud integration for autoscaling
Developers
know software but
not infrastructure!

50. Entity
Offer
Offer
Offer

51. Artifact
Export
Export
Export

52. OSGi
Export
Export
Export
People don’t want
to depend on OSGi.
They just want to
import the good
things it exports!

53. Thank you
@MilenDyankov