GATESPACE TELEMATICS GOES OPEN SOURCE
Gatespace Telematics releases Ubiserv, a Java based, OSGi release 3 certified service platform, built on the open source project KnopflerfishGöteborg, Sweden 13 May 2004 - Gatespace Telematics, a leader in OSGi technology today announced the release of Ubiserv, an OSGi release 3 certified service platform. Large and vital parts of Ubiserv are built on Knopflerfish, an open source distribution of the Java based OSGi specifications.
"Ubiserv is a commercial Knopflerfish distribution", says Christer
Larsson, CEO of Gatespace Telematics. "It is a fully supported product
and it is primarily intended for corporate use. We are the guys picking
up the support phone when there is a problem, giving companies the
assurance they need to use open source software."
The business model for using Ubiserv is simple, customers pay for the
support, nothing else. A customer wanting to use Ubiserv must sign an
SLA, Service Level Agreement, to set the level of support. Except for
this cost, there are no additional licensing costs for using or
deploying products shipped with Ubiserv. A customer in no need of
support may instead use the freely available Knopflerfish distribution.
Christer Larsson continues: "With the general open source momentum
combined with the momentum for OSGi in the vehicle and mobile
industries, we felt it was perfect timing for going open source. At the
same time we have identified the need for support from companies to get
full acceptance for using open source in commercial products. By
offering a fully supported open source product, we feel confident we
have a winning combination".
The open source Knopflerfish OSGi distribution is based on Gatespace's
GDSP product, and includes the OSGi framework, the most popular
standard OSGi services and Knopflerfish add-ons like the graphical
desktop, log and console utilities. "In the Knopflerfish 1.3 release,
our design goals were to create an easy-to-use, efficient and fully
interoperable OSGi R3 toolkit. Previous versions of the Knopflerfish
distribution are already in use at several sites around the world and
we have an active community committing to the project", says Erik
Wistrand, President of the Knopflerfish organization.