This seems to be a topic of increasing discussion both inside IBM and within the Eclipse Process Framework community. Questions such as “Which offering will get feature XYZ first?” “Are they functionally equivalent?” “Should the customer buy Rational Method Composer or will EPF Composer do the same thing?” are asked weekly. To refresh everyone, Rational Method Composer is a commercial tool by IBM Rational Software for the authoring of method content and for publishing configurations of method content as processes. EPF Composer is a subset of RMC code and was donated by IBM to the Eclipse Foundation as open source. The idea over time is that EPF Composer will be a core component of RMC, while RMC will add value through proprietary features and support that might not be possible in a purely open source offering.
I would like to see the relationship between EPF Composer and Rational Method Composer develop in the same way the relationship of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora Core Linux has evolved. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora Core Linux are the result of Red Hat’s experience in developing, maintaining, and selling Linux distributions over more than a decade. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a commercial distribution of Linux that is sold by Red Hat. You cannot download RHEL executable code for free. Each major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is stable, evolves conservatively, and this all works very well if you are an IT administrator who does not want to deal with constant architectural churn of your server operating system. Fedora Core Linux, on the other hand, is entirely open source and is available in source or binary form for download by anyone. Fedora Core Linux pushes the technology barrier to the bleeding edge. One could consider Fedora Core Linux unstable in terms of constant change, yet revolutionary in terms of the capabilities it incorporates with this regular cycle of change. An example would be the inclusion of Xen virtualization technology recently added to Fedora Core 5. Xen is developed out of University of Cambridge. Imagine having virtual machine technology, like what mainframes have had for decades, as a standard feature of your PC operating system. How would having the ability to partition the operating system into multiple, independent virtual systems change the landscape of data center design? It will. Once it is there, administrators will begin to count on it. Xen is not quite stable, yet adding it to Fedora Core 5 will push Xen toward stability by making it accessible in a highly popular Linux distribution. As cutting edge features are added to Fedora Core Linux and stabilized, they are eventually consumed by Red Hat Enterprise Linux and supported over the long term [years] by the RHEL teams. We will see Xen show up in a future release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux when it has stabilized enough for commercial adoption. Additionally, proprietary features such as hardware device drivers and other closed-source capabilities can be found in RHEL, but will never make it to Fedora Core Linux.
Let’s project this idea onto Rational Method Composer and EPF Composer. Imagine EPF Composer is where new experimental ideas are realized into the tool for authoring and publishing software processes. Risks would be taken here, changes happen quickly, and the essence of the tool represents the cutting edge of ideas in the IT process authoring space from experts in business and academia. As new concepts are stabilized in EPF Composer and deemed fit for commercial inclusion, they are consumed by Rational Method Composer and supported by the world’s largest Information Technology company and the service professionals behind it. This would not mean that Rational Method Composer would be behind the times in terms of features. It means those features taken from EPF Composer and added into Rational Method Composer would be supported over the long term [years] and allow for a predictable maintenance path for CIOs, on-site technical support and formal training professionals. Additionally, Rational Method Composer might get capabilities that are not applicable to an entirely open source tool. A partnership with another vendor might allow Rational Method Composer to import and export data with another commercial closed source tool. Such an agreement would not be possible in open source.
I think it is important to define the nature of the relationship between these two offerings and how they will benefit from each other’s existence. This is one possible approach for how that relationship might evolve.