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Subject: Re: Licensing model
From: Marcel Offermans <marcel.offermans@luminis.nl>
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Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 12:26:32 +0200
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To: <users@ace.apache.org>

Hello Mickael,

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner.

On Jul 24, 2012, at 13:50 , Mickael Marrache wrote:

> Company A wants to sell an application server to companies B and C. =
The
> application server consists of multiple bundles. For each company, =
many
> application servers may be installed on different nodes. So, on each =
node,
> I think there would be one Apache Felix instance and the bundles that
> compose the application server installed on it.

Yes. ACE can manage an OSGi framework if you install the "management =
agent" bundle in this framework (this is called a "target" in ACE). You =
can either do that with a startup script, or we have a version of Felix =
that "embeds" this management agent.

> But, for each application server installation, some bundles are =
provided
> following a license. For example, company B may have bought a license =
to
> use a certain bundle of the application server, that provides a =
particular
> service. Company C may have bought a more expensive license, therefore
> using the same bundle as B plus another bundle that provides another
> service.

Using the features and distributions of ACE, you can group certain =
bundles and configuration files together to form such licenses. You can =
then associate a distribution (or more of them) with a target (=3D an =
OSGi framework with management agent).

So for this example, you might have one "base" distribution with the =
plain application server, and some "extra" distributions with the =
licensed add-ons.

> So, I need a way to differentiate the nodes (i.e. a node belongs to a
> particular customer). I also need a way to control which bundles are
> installed/used on a certain node following certain license =
information.

Targets (nodes) can be tagged with custom tags. It would therefore be =
easy to add a "customer=3DFoo" to a target to associate it with a =
customer. You can then create a custom "association" between a =
distribution and "any target that has the customer=3DFoo tag".

> Is it possible using Apache Ace? If yes, is it enough mature to be =
used in
> production?

We are using it in production in the Amazon Cloud. We are using trunk =
now, and we are working hard on getting a "1.0" release done. There =
definitely are still some rough edges though.

Greetings, Marcel