This is an automated email from the ASF dual-hosted git repository. davsclaus pushed a commit to branch blog/camel-by-the-numbers in repository https://gitbox.apache.org/repos/asf/camel-website.git
commit 72fe9a358fb5a46a03345c6b4e94862db74af6d9 Author: Claus Ibsen <[email protected]> AuthorDate: Thu Jun 4 10:56:42 2026 +0200 blog: Apache Camel by the Numbers — 19 years of open source integration New blog post with verifiable project statistics from git history, GitHub, OpenHub, and Stack Overflow. Also updates user-stories page intro with call-to-action for organizations to add themselves. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <[email protected]> --- .../blog/2026/06/camel-by-the-numbers/featured.svg | 28 +++++ content/blog/2026/06/camel-by-the-numbers/index.md | 124 +++++++++++++++++++++ content/community/user-stories.md | 4 +- 3 files changed, 154 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/blog/2026/06/camel-by-the-numbers/featured.svg b/content/blog/2026/06/camel-by-the-numbers/featured.svg new file mode 100644 index 00000000..14a43804 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/2026/06/camel-by-the-numbers/featured.svg @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"; viewBox="0 0 1200 630"> + <defs> + <linearGradient id="bg" x1="0%" y1="0%" x2="100%" y2="100%"> + <stop offset="0%" style="stop-color:#1a1a2e"/> + <stop offset="100%" style="stop-color:#16213e"/> + </linearGradient> + <linearGradient id="accent" x1="0%" y1="0%" x2="100%" y2="0%"> + <stop offset="0%" style="stop-color:#e94560"/> + <stop offset="100%" style="stop-color:#f5a623"/> + </linearGradient> + </defs> + <rect width="1200" height="630" fill="url(#bg)"/> + <rect x="0" y="580" width="1200" height="6" fill="url(#accent)"/> + <text x="600" y="180" text-anchor="middle" font-family="system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif" font-size="72" font-weight="700" fill="#ffffff">Apache Camel</text> + <text x="600" y="250" text-anchor="middle" font-family="system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif" font-size="42" font-weight="300" fill="#8892b0">by the Numbers</text> + <line x1="400" y1="280" x2="800" y2="280" stroke="url(#accent)" stroke-width="3"/> + <text x="200" y="370" text-anchor="middle" font-family="system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif" font-size="48" font-weight="700" fill="#e94560">100K</text> + <text x="200" y="400" text-anchor="middle" font-family="system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif" font-size="18" fill="#8892b0">commits</text> + <text x="400" y="370" text-anchor="middle" font-family="system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif" font-size="48" font-weight="700" fill="#f5a623">1,600+</text> + <text x="400" y="400" text-anchor="middle" font-family="system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif" font-size="18" fill="#8892b0">contributors</text> + <text x="600" y="370" text-anchor="middle" font-family="system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif" font-size="48" font-weight="700" fill="#e94560">500+</text> + <text x="600" y="400" text-anchor="middle" font-family="system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif" font-size="18" fill="#8892b0">companies</text> + <text x="800" y="370" text-anchor="middle" font-family="system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif" font-size="48" font-weight="700" fill="#f5a623">311</text> + <text x="800" y="400" text-anchor="middle" font-family="system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif" font-size="18" fill="#8892b0">components</text> + <text x="1000" y="370" text-anchor="middle" font-family="system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif" font-size="48" font-weight="700" fill="#e94560">19</text> + <text x="1000" y="400" text-anchor="middle" font-family="system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif" font-size="18" fill="#8892b0">years</text> + <text x="600" y="500" text-anchor="middle" font-family="system-ui, -apple-system, sans-serif" font-size="22" fill="#ccd6f6">The world's most widely deployed open source integration framework</text> +</svg> diff --git a/content/blog/2026/06/camel-by-the-numbers/index.md b/content/blog/2026/06/camel-by-the-numbers/index.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..64e1c023 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/blog/2026/06/camel-by-the-numbers/index.md @@ -0,0 +1,124 @@ +--- +title: "Apache Camel by the Numbers: 19 Years of Open Source Integration" +date: 2026-06-04 +draft: false +authors: [davsclaus] +categories: ["Community"] +keywords: ["apache camel", "open source", "statistics", "community", "enterprise integration", "contributors", "adoption"] +preview: "100,000 commits, 1,600+ contributors, 450+ companies, 311 components, 300+ releases — the numbers behind one of the world's most widely deployed open source integration frameworks" +--- + +When the first commit landed on March 19, 2007, Apache Camel was a routing library with a handful of components and a single contributor. Nineteen years later, the git repository has crossed **100,000 commits** from **1,600+ contributors** representing **450+ companies** across more than **20 countries**. The project ships **311 integration components**, has published **300+ releases**, and runs in production at organizations where downtime means grounded flights, blocked payments, or mi [...] + +These aren't marketing estimates. Every number in this post is verifiable from the [git repository](https://github.com/apache/camel), [OpenHub](https://openhub.net/p/camel), [Stack Overflow](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/apache-camel), and [GitHub](https://github.com/apache/camel). We ran the queries. Here's what the data says. + +## 450+ Companies Contribute Code + +The most revealing statistic isn't the commit count — it's the **450+ distinct corporate email domains** that appear in the git history as commit authors or co-authors — and that's just the provable floor. Many more contributors use personal email (gmail) or GitHub's privacy-masked addresses, as is standard practice in open source. These are engineers who hit a bug, wrote a fix, and contributed it back using their company email. IBM, SAP, Huawei, Nokia, Bosch, Tesco, Target, JD.com, ING [...] + +Companies don't contribute patches to software they evaluate. They contribute to software that runs in production. When a BP engineer fixes an HTTP response handling issue and signs the commit with `@bp.com`, that's evidence of production usage that no case study or marketing page can match. + +Beyond the git history, **11,700+ Stack Overflow questions** tagged `apache-camel` confirm a large, active developer community asking real implementation questions — not tire-kickers, but engineers building systems. + +## Still Growing After 19 Years + +Open source projects typically follow a lifecycle: rapid early growth, a plateau, then decline as the next shiny framework appears. Camel defied this pattern. The 2019–2023 period saw the **highest commit volumes** in the project's history — peaking at nearly 9,000 commits in 2020 alone. More significantly, **192 developers made their first contribution** in 2020. Contribution levels have naturally settled from that peak — a trend visible across many open source projects as AI coding ass [...] + +The sustained contribution rate is partly explained by Camel's architecture. With 311 independent components, contributors can work on `camel-kafka` without understanding `camel-salesforce`. The barrier to entry is a single component, not the entire framework. This modular structure turns what could be an intimidating 8.8-million-line codebase into hundreds of manageable, focused projects. + +## Where the Code Runs + +Numbers on a screen mean nothing without context. Here's where Camel actually runs: + +The **Central Bank of Brazil** built [Pix](https://www.redhat.com/en/resources/central-bank-of-brazil-case-study) — the country's instant payment system serving **200+ million people** — on a stack that includes Apache Camel alongside Kafka and OpenShift. Camel is part of the integration layer that makes instant payments work for an entire country. + +**CERN** uses Camel and ActiveMQ for the Large Hadron Collider's control systems — [190 million messages per day](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2726702/open-source-messaging-at--nearly--the-speed-of-light.html) across 85,000 machines with 99.98% uptime. As their principal JMS engineer put it: *"If there is no JMS there is no particle physics."* + +**UPS** processes [tens of billions of messages per day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDjwr16uaYU) on Apache Camel and ActiveMQ on OpenShift — the largest known Camel deployment by message volume. + +**Systematic**, one of Denmark's largest software companies, uses Camel as the integration layer for the Columna CIS electronic patient record system serving **3 of 5 Danish regions** — 60,000 healthcare professionals caring for 3.2 million citizens. + +The [User Stories](/community/user-stories/) page now documents 100+ organizations across healthcare, financial services, aviation, energy, government, retail, logistics, and media — from Fortune 10 companies to national governments. + +## 39% Tests + +Of the 56,000+ Java files in the repository, **22,000 are test files** — 39% of the entire codebase. That ratio reflects a project culture where reliability is non-negotiable. When your users include air traffic control systems (FAA), nuclear research facilities (CERN), and national payment infrastructure (Central Bank of Brazil), every commit gets tested. + +The project maintains multiple Long-Term Support (LTS) release lines simultaneously. Each LTS line receives security fixes and critical bug fixes for approximately one year. Migration guides are published for every major version. Backwards compatibility is taken seriously — because breaking changes at CERN or UPS aren't an option. + +## What the Numbers Mean for Developers + +If you're evaluating Apache Camel for a project, the numbers tell you three things: + +**1. You're not alone.** 1,600+ contributors, 450+ companies, and 11,700+ Stack Overflow questions mean that whatever problem you hit, someone has likely hit it before. The community is large enough that questions get answered, bugs get fixed, and components stay maintained. + +**2. It won't disappear.** Projects with one maintainer or one corporate sponsor carry risk. Camel has survived the transitions from SOA to microservices to cloud-native to AI agents — not by pivoting, but by adding components for each new paradigm while keeping the core stable. The Apache Software Foundation governance ensures no single company can acquire, pivot, or shut down the project. + +**3. It scales from prototype to national infrastructure.** The same framework that runs with `camel jbang run hello.yaml` on your laptop runs Pix for 200 million Brazilians. That's a deployment range few frameworks can match. + +## The Full Data + +For transparency, here are the complete statistics from the git repository and public sources. + +### Repository Statistics (June 2026) + +| Metric | Core Repo | All Repos (Core + Spring Boot + Quarkus + K) | +|---|---|---| +| Total commits | ~100,000 | ~166,000 | +| Contributors (unique emails) | 1,610 | — | +| Corporate email domains | 450+ (author + co-author, provable floor) | — | +| Integration components | 311 | — | +| Java source files | 56,169 | — | +| Test files | 21,939 (39%) | — | +| Lines of Java code | 8.8 million | — | +| Release tags | 301 | — | +| JIRA issues referenced | 17,194 | — | + +### Public Online Sources + +| Source | Metric | Value | +|---|---|---| +| [GitHub](https://github.com/apache/camel) | Stars | 6,200+ | +| [GitHub](https://github.com/apache/camel) | Forks | 5,100+ | +| [OpenHub](https://openhub.net/p/camel) | Assessment | "well-established, mature codebase, very large development team" | +| [Stack Overflow](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/apache-camel) | Questions | 11,700+ | + +### Commits Per Year + +| Year | Commits | Active Contributors | New Contributors | +|---|---|---|---| +| 2007 | 1,177 | 7 | 7 | +| 2008 | 2,122 | 12 | 8 | +| 2009 | 3,313 | 14 | 4 | +| 2010 | 2,554 | 18 | 5 | +| 2011 | 3,230 | 26 | 9 | +| 2012 | 3,983 | 24 | 4 | +| 2013 | 4,235 | 50 | 33 | +| 2014 | 4,099 | 99 | 78 | +| 2015 | 4,995 | 144 | 95 | +| 2016 | 5,596 | 199 | 157 | +| 2017 | 5,337 | 213 | 155 | +| 2018 | 4,607 | 191 | 125 | +| 2019 | 7,887 | 226 | 160 | +| 2020 | 8,882 | 269 | 192 | +| 2021 | 6,973 | 236 | 148 | +| 2022 | 7,142 | 224 | 121 | +| 2023 | 8,208 | 221 | 120 | +| 2024 | 6,563 | 165 | 81 | +| 2025 | 5,279 | 153 | 73 | + +### Country Representation (from email domain TLDs) + +France, Brazil, United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Finland, Russia, Poland, New Zealand, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, Australia, Romania, Czech Republic, and more. + +### GitHub Stars + +The [apache/camel](https://github.com/apache/camel) repository has **6,200+ stars** on GitHub. If you use Camel and haven't starred the project yet, we'd appreciate it — it helps others discover the project and signals to the open source community that Camel is actively used and valued. + +## Add Your Organization + +If your company or organization uses Apache Camel and would like to be featured on the [User Stories](/community/user-stories/) page, we'd love to hear from you. Reach out on the [mailing list](https://camel.apache.org/community/mailing-list/), open a pull request on [camel-website](https://github.com/apache/camel-website), or contact us on [Zulip chat](https://camel.zulipchat.com/). A one-line description and a link to a public reference (blog post, case study, conference talk, or even [...] + +--- + +*All statistics in this post are derived from the [Apache Camel git repository](https://github.com/apache/camel), [OpenHub](https://openhub.net/p/camel), [Stack Overflow](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/apache-camel), and the [GitHub API](https://docs.github.com/en/rest). The data was collected in June 2026.* diff --git a/content/community/user-stories.md b/content/community/user-stories.md index 6c49d3d7..30c89b16 100644 --- a/content/community/user-stories.md +++ b/content/community/user-stories.md @@ -2,13 +2,13 @@ title: "User Stories" --- -This page is intended as a place to collect user stories and feedback on Apache Camel. If you are using or have tried Apache Camel please add an entry or comment; or post to the mailing list. +This page is intended as a place to collect user stories and feedback on Apache Camel. If your company or organization uses Apache Camel and would like to be featured here, reach out on the [mailing list](/community/mailing-list/), open a pull request on [camel-website](https://github.com/apache/camel-website), or contact us on [Zulip chat](https://camel.zulipchat.com/). A one-line description and a link to a public reference (blog post, case study, conference talk, or LinkedIn post) is [...] {{< table >}} | Company, Product, or Project | Description | |-------------------------------|------------| |[UPS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDjwr16uaYU)|Processes tens of billions of messages per day on Apache Camel and ActiveMQ on OpenShift. The largest known Apache Camel deployment by message volume.| -|[Sabre Holdings](https://www.camelone.org/camelone-2012/)|National US travel gateway processing 32,000 transactions per second (1.4 billion per day). Migrated from proprietary TPF mainframe to Apache Camel (JBoss Fuse) with significant cost savings and zero system failures. Powers the travel and aviation industry.| +|[Sabre Holdings](https://www.camelone.org/camelone-2012/)|National US travel gateway — migrated from proprietary TPF mainframe to Apache Camel (JBoss Fuse) with significant cost savings and zero system failures. Processes tens of thousands of transactions per second for airlines and hotels worldwide. Presented at CamelOne 2011 and 2012.| |[Central Bank of Brazil (Pix)](https://www.redhat.com/en/resources/central-bank-of-brazil-case-study)|Brazil's national instant payment system serving 200+ million people. Built on Apache Camel (Red Hat Integration), AMQ Streams (Kafka), and OpenShift. Processes 2,000 transactions/second, 99% within 4 seconds. 72 million+ registrations at launch. Replaced paper-based payments for an entire country. 24x7 availability.| |[Vocalink, a Mastercard company](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xQKG1TSrZc)|Camel is the backbone of Vocalink's core real-time payment platform, processing millions of transactions.| |[Systematic](https://systematic.com/int/industries/healthcare/solutions/hospital-care/columna-cis/)|Denmark's largest privately owned software company and Scandinavia's leading healthcare IT provider. Their Columna CIS electronic patient record is the most widespread EMR in Denmark, serving [3 of 5 Danish regions](https://systematic.com/int/industries/healthcare/news/news/cis-new-electronic-health-record-system-gives-concrete-benefits-for-the-regions/) (Central, North, Southern Denmark) [...]
