[this announcement is also available online at http://s.apache.org/SxF]
Open Source mashup platform provides easy-to-use infrastructure for building and integrating with social media standards including Activity Streams, OpenSocial, W3C Widgets, and more. Forest Hill, MD -- The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives, today announced that Apache Rave has graduated from the Apache Incubator to become a Top-Level Project (TLP), signifying that the Project's community and products have been well-governed under the ASF's meritocratic process and principles. Apache Rave is an Open Source software mashup platform that allows developers to build and engage with an array of social network technologies such as OpenSocial, Activity Streams, and W3C Widgets. Rave's lightweight and extensible approach to robust personalization and collaboration capabilities supports a simple model for integration across other platforms, services and solutions. "Internet social platforms, such as Facebook, Google+, and Twitter have shaped the expectations of today's users; creating an onslaught of demand for pervasive social integration within both consumer and enterprise applications," said Matthew B. Franklin, Vice President of Apache Rave and Lead Software Engineer at The MITRE Corporation. "Developers today are constantly faced with the need to deliver low-cost, scalable, modularized applications with deep-rooted social capabilities. Apache Rave is the first open source project chartered to deliver a lightweight, flexible, widget-based platform to meet these demands." Apache Rave bundles the efforts of several independent Open Source initiatives that address similar functionality and requirements into a single, enterprise-grade platform that easily scales across federated application integrations, social intranets, and multi-channel social communities with enhanced personalization and customized content delivery. Developed on open standards, Apache Rave is collaboratively supported by individuals from a wide range of corporations, non-commercial organizations, and institutes from around the world. Seeded by code donations from The MITRE Corporation, Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute, SURFnet, OSS Watch, Hippo, and numerous individual developers; interest in Apache Rave continues, and the Project welcomes new participants to its growing community. "Apache Rave takes the good bits from traditional Portals, leaves out whatever made them so heavy-weight and adds modern web technologies like OpenSocial, Widgets, Social Networking, Mobile delivery and Content Services. Rave has already proven to be a platform not to be underestimated. Hippo is proud to be an initiator and participant of this project, and plans to make Rave an integral part of its context-aware content delivery platform", said Ate Douma, Apache Rave incubating Champion and Chief Architect for open-source CMS vendor Hippo. "The Apache Rave project delivers a perfect platform for our personalized University Portal. Together with SURFnet we hope to develop, integrate and use all possible OpenSocial aspects to benefit our Academic community to the fullest," said Sander Liemberg, Project Manager at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. "As participants in Apache Rave, we are very interested in applying its capabilities to managing scientific collaborations and access to computing resources. Rave is also interesting because of its capacity to be extended by developers: Rave provides a packaged, out-of-the box experience, but we are also trying to ensure it is can also serve as a starting point for developers who wish to extend its capabilities," said Marlon Pierce, Science Gateway Group Lead at Indiana University and Apache Rave PMC Member. "In particular, we at Indiana University are taking the specialized requirements of the National Science Foundation XSEDE Science Gateway program." Since entering the Apache Incubator in March 2011, the Apache Rave project has successfully produced several code releases in preparation of its first production-ready, v1.0 release. In addition, Apache Rave recently received an honorable mention in the 2011 Open Source Rookies of the Year awards. "We are pleased to have been a founding member of the Apache Rave community and are excited for the future of the project. Rave will be a cornerstone capability for our internal and external users, and we look forward to the continued collaboration and co-development with the community," said Joel Jacobs, Chief Information Officer, The MITRE Corporation. Availability and Oversight Apache Rave software is released under the Apache License v2.0, and is overseen by a self-selected team of active contributors to the project. A Project Management Committee (PMC) guides the Project's day-to-day operations, including community development and product releases. Apache Rave source code, documentation, mailing lists, and related resources are available at http://rave.apache.org/ About The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) Established in 1999, the all-volunteer Foundation oversees nearly one hundred fifty leading Open Source projects, including Apache HTTP Server -- the world's most popular Web server software. Through the ASF's meritocratic process known as "The Apache Way," more than 350 individual Members and 3,000 Committers successfully collaborate to develop freely available enterprise-grade software, benefiting millions of users worldwide: thousands of software solutions are distributed under the Apache License; and the community actively participates in ASF mailing lists, mentoring initiatives, and ApacheCon, the Foundation's official user conference, trainings, and expo. The ASF is a US 501(3)(c) not-for-profit charity, funded by individual donations and corporate sponsors including AMD, Basis Technology, Cloudera, Facebook, Google, IBM, HP, Hortonworks, Matt Mullenweg, Microsoft, PSW Group, SpringSource/VMware, and Yahoo!. For more information, visit http://www.apache.org/. "Apache", "Apache Rave", and "ApacheCon" are trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation. All other brands and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. # # #
