[bpel-dev] Offer of donation of WS-BPEL implementation to assist project

[Mark Little <mark.little@xxxxxxxxx>]

We know that the Eclipse-BPEL project is looking for a WS-BPEL 2.0 
engine with which to test. After some discussion within JBoss, it seems 
to us that in the interests of the community as a whole, it might make 
sense for JBoss to donate our jBPM-BPEL runtime for use within the 
project: essentially for this implementation to become the reference for 
Eclipse in the event that other projects have a similar need. jBPM-BPEL 
is licensed under terms that closely approach LGPL except for certain 
amendments required to comply with the IPR statements known to the OASIS 
WS-BPEL TC. Therefore, it should not pose any problems with inclusion or 
use by Eclipse. Because we think this is so important for the community, 
we've spent the last few days looking at the group requirements and 
trying to match them (or vice versa) with the current jBPM development 
goals. As you can see outlined below, we think that this represents a 
good opportunity to catapult the Eclipse-BPEL work forward by several 
months and allow the group as a whole to concentrate on higher-level 
aspects of BPEL design and use, which will benefit all of our users.

It appears that these are the current Eclipse BPEL milestones:

M0: December 15
M1: View Only. January 31
M2: View and Author simple, exercise extension points. March 7
M3: View and Author complex, and Validate. May 15
M4: Deploy and Debug a process to the reference runtime. July 1
M5: Verify deployment and debug to proprietary runtimes. August 15
M6 (1.0): Exercise Activity extension. October 1

The jBPM-BPEL product roadmap has monthly beta releases and a GA release 
at the end of Q2 covering the public review draft of the BPEL 
specification due for release in May.

jBPM BPEL 1.0 beta 1      31/Mar/06
jBPM BPEL 1.0 beta 2     28/Apr/06
jBPM BPEL 1.0 beta 3     26/May/06
jBPM BPEL 1.0         23/Jun/06

Once 1.0 GA is out, we will track the specification review process to 
incorporate changes while building new features. Such features include 
communication with the BPEL designer and support for non-normative Web 
Services standards.

After the OASIS TC finalizes WS-BPEL 2.0 somewhere in Q4, we intend to 
release another GA version with full support as quickly as we can.

Obviously our current release plans are based purely on this being done 
within JBoss, i.e. resourced entirely by JBoss staff and community 
members. However, if the Eclipse group accepts the contribution of 
jBPM-BPEL we would able to increase the community involvement in order 
to escalate some of these delivery dates, if necessary.

If accepted, we think that as a group, this Eclipse BPEL project could 
make the following milestones:

1. Release Eclipse/jBPM BPEL 1.0 GA covering the BPEL 2 public review 
draft, June 23
2. Deliver the framework and the RI for deploying a process, July 1
3. Deliver the framework and the RI for debugging a process, August 15
4. Release jBPM BPEL 2.0 GA covering the final BPEL 2 spec, November 17

As mentioned earlier, these dates are probably quite conservative. If 
the entire Eclipse-BPEL community can get behind the development of the 
donated jBPM-BPEL then we may be able to shorten the development 
lifecycle significantly.

Mark.

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Mark Little (mark.little@xxxxxxxxx)
Director of Standards