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Reading wiki page about osgi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSGi I saw that there is no JSR about OSGi only OSGi related JSR. Does it mean that OSGi specification is out of JSR? If yes, then why?

Pavel_K
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is not about programming and cannot lead to a practical, useful answer. – Neil Bartlett May 10 '16 at 18:00

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It seems that OSGi was, at one point around 2006, formalized with JSR-291, though it had existed independently since 1999... This JSR was finalized in August 2007, but I can't find any mention of it after that or in the current OSGi Specification (R6), so my guess is that it was quietly forgotten after that.

The current JSR that is active and aims to introduce modules to the JVM is JSR-376, which is a central part of Project Jigsaw, to be introduced with Java 9 sometime in 2017.

Notice that Jigsaw is completely unrelated to OSGi (though Peter Kriens, author of probably the most widely used OSGi tool, Bnd, is member of JSR-376 expert group and of the OSGi Alliance), though both projects share the same goal of adding better modularity to Java.

Why OSGi has gone its own way with the OSGi Alliance and chose to not follow the JSR process can only be guessed at... but in my opinion, it seems that while OSGi never had wide acceptance in the Java community as a whole, it did become very popular in certain areas including IoT/embedded devices and application servers, which is not what your average Java dev works on... so it makes sense that it should follow the most appropriate channel for its evolution, with an alliance of interested parties (companies like Ericsson and IBM) which has existed in some way or another since the late 90's and seems to have worked pretty well for them.

Peter Kriens
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Renato
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  • Thank you for your answer but I can't agree with `OSGi never had wide acceptance in the Java community as a whole, it did become very popular in certain areas including IoT/embedded devices and application servers`. Today almost 90% (if not more) of libraries are provided as osgi bundles. – Pavel_K May 10 '16 at 04:44
  • This kind of answer is exactly why the question doesn't belong on StackOverflow. Pure politics... – Neil Bartlett May 10 '16 at 18:01
  • @NeilBartlett I tried to get a strictly politics-free answer by giving some facts regarding OSGi and JSR's to try to establish a background on why JSRs may not make sense for OSGi. How is my answer pure politics? – Renato May 11 '16 at 18:46
  • @Renato I didn't say there was anything non-factual about your answer. But it's a purely political topic, not a technical one. – Neil Bartlett May 14 '16 at 21:19